The Joe Rogan Experience - #797 - Alex & Allyson Grey

Episode Date: May 10, 2016

Alex Grey is a visionary artist, author, teacher, and Vajrayana practitioner. Alex and Allyson are co-founders of CoSM, Chapel of Sacred Mirrors, and are currently working to build Entheon. http://buildentheon.com

And we're live. You don't have headphones? I don't. There you go. Alex and Allison Gray. Hello. How are you guys? Great, Joe. I think you gotta turn that sucker around and see that one. There you go. Nope. Oh my goodness. This is Joey Diaz part two.

Remember when Joey Diaz couldn't figure out the headphones? Welcome, folks. What's going on? We are in the middle of building Entheon. I've heard. Yeah. That's the rumor. The thing that you got us kicked off on, really.

The last time that we spoke to you, we were doing a Kickstarter campaign to build Entheon. It was like three years ago. And we're in the middle of another one because we started building it and we need a little more money to finish the interior. Now we've got a three-story, 12,000-square-foot building with a new roof and incredible spaces to exhibit visionary art. So it's there. And I guess it's just a matter of time about finishing it. And the more money we get, the quicker we'll be able to finish it. Are there images of it right now currently in construction that people can view?

Oh, look at that. Jamie's a mott. Whoa, that's amazing. Where did you get? That looks like really old brick. That's cool looking brick. 1882. It was built in 1882.

We're saving the carriage house from 1882. So explain the process. So it started out as a carriage house. Yep. And you saved part of it? Yes. We surrounded it. Wow. Oh, so part of it? Yes. We surrounded it. Wow.

Oh, so you surrounded it with art. It's inside the building. Whoa, Jamie, scroll back up. Hold on, don't go anywhere. Get back up to the top one. Yeah, look at that. Wow. That's intense.

That's just one room on the third floor. That's where the sacred mirrors are going to be. There's three floors. Yeah, we're going to put crisscross kind of lattice across the angels. Let's see. On my Instagram, I suppose, there's a more recent feed of the interior. Now we've got a couple of the actual angels. There were ten angels in the previous chapel installation there in New York City.

And I always wanted to he went to uh the wrong alex gray he went to some where we're trying yeah yeah that's relevant isn't it it is it is well let's see so there's a space there's one of the angels over there. That's a – yeah. Wow. This is the planned corner, one of the angels of the four corners, that the direction of the building that we're kind of recycling, the carriage house, has the corners of the buildings pointing in the cardinal directions. So I thought that a feature of them, there will be angels of the north, south, east, west. And part of the whole thing is getting the four quadrants together.

On top of the building, there's a steeplehead that is basically a four-faced being that is the people of the four directions coming together in visionary oneness. So as a building, it's a big, basically, godhead. Is that a real image of the actual outside of the building with that angel on it? No, that's the computer model that was made by one of the Disney animators, Ryan Tottle. He's the guy that is responsible for running one of the digital animation teams that did Zootopia and Frozen.

He's an amazing modeler. Go back there, Jamie. Look at this outside of this building. That might be the coolest looking building on the planet Earth. Go up a little bit and you'll see one of the coolest things about the video that is in there is that it shows a kind of spin around of the building itself that was done by these amazing... That's from the front so you've got a kind of

evolutionary thing going on on the sides and then it gets to the front door which is Adam and Eve creating a better world so it kind of brings together those mythologies

of those narratives of development can you can you zoom in on the adam and eve jamie is it a zoom is it his guess is that a caduceus in in the middle of them let's see actually down below uh way down below there's a um there you get to see. Oh, wow. So you really did the caduceus and then sort of replicated the DNA, which a lot of people believe was what the caduceus was based on in the first place, right? Mm-hmm. And it's all growing out of some mushrooms there at the base. Alex did the drawing. Wow.

And then it was sculpted in teak. Whoa. Full size, four by eight foot doors. There's two of them. And then we had it scanned. We got a grant to have it scanned. And then it'll be on the door in metal. So it'll be cast in metal.

The originals will be on view inside because they're made of teak. Oh, that's wild. And they're so precious. So what kind of metals are going to be cast in? Bronze, I'm hoping. Ooh. Whoa, that's wild. And they're so precious. So what kind of metals are going to be cast in? Bronze, I'm hoping. Ooh. Whoa, that is so cool. Yeah. And so what is going on

with the evolution thing? So there's the lower hominids, they become homo erectus, and then what is that child-like thing with the arms up in the air? Well, I wanted to – thanks for noticing that. On the end of this paintbrush, which is kind of flying up and indicating a kind of upward trajectory, there's a drip coming off of it.

And the drip also looks like an eyeball. The center of the eyeball is the earth. And there's a skeleton, a child, and the person who's fully grown, woman and man, on either side. And they each are reaching for the planet. Now the question is, who's going to get the ball, basically? The skeleton or the human? Yeah. Will we be handing this to the next generation,

or are we just going to blow it? So the skeleton sort of represents death? Yeah, it represents the end of the line for the human species. For anybody who's not, I didn't even introduce your page. The Instagram page is, what is it? Is it AlexGreatCosm?

C-O-S-M? This is buildantheon.com. This is the Kickstarter. And how long has it been going on for now? Let's see, about 20 days. We're halfway there. We have a 40-day campaign. We're about

three times where we were last. We did this campaign the same length, the same days, three years ago in 2013, and we're three times ahead of where we were. And we actually, well, we did 160% of our goal the last time. So we're challenging ourselves to even higher. What I meant was how long has it been under construction? It's been since September of 2015. Okay. So a year or so? Yeah. A year and a bit. So what is the ultimate end date where you believe this will all be constructed? So what is the ultimate end date where you believe this will all be constructed?

Well, it really depends on the money that we raise to do the exterior. The interior we're going to have done by 2017, and we're aiming at the winter of 2017. It should be doable. You know, everybody's telling us it's doable. This is the interior we'll open, the exhibition. And then we'll see. You know, everybody's telling us this is the interior will open the exhibition. And then we'll see, you know, who knows? I mean, there's there's indications that, you know, like, you don't know how money money's going to come in. This campaign is only to finish the exhibition interiorly. And then, you know, if we still, which I think we will need to raise another $1.5 million to do the sculptural exterior, which is done by 3D printout.

It's a 3D printout 20 feet high by 8 by 8. And what is the substance it's made of? Well, it'll be finished in glass-reinforced cast concrete, but you print out the foam, then you make the mold. You make a fiberglass mold. There's about a couple dozen molds that will be needed to do the sculptures. And there's a place right across the river from us, 30 minutes away, that does this. Well, that's convenient.

Oh, yeah. We were thinking coming to California. There are places that do it out here, but we found a place so close, and they're doing the Brooklyn Academy of Music and some of the big buildings in the city. Has anybody done anything even remotely like this? Well, you'll see theme parks where things are, but the glass-reinforced cast concrete

will make it enduring. If they don't knock it down with a wrecking ball, it'll be there in a thousand years. The building itself is a tomb. I mean, it's made to be enduring. That's our mission, actually. So the mission is to have this thing survive you. The mission is to build an enduring sanctuary of visionary art to uplift a global

community. That's our actual mission. Do you guys have a caretaker when you pass? Have you already thought of like when you move on to the next dimension, who's going to take over this thing? It's a church. So it became a church in 2008. And so the church, a church is generally run by its board and the staff that works there. But, you know, the board of directors are the people that own the church. We actually live there, but our house that we built there will belong to the church. Everything we're doing there will belong to the church. It's a 40-acre compound, basically, in the Hudson Valley. And that's where it's happening. There's 21 people working there now. Wow.

I trust you guys with the church. I know. I don't trust a whole lot of people with the church. I go, yeah, they're not going to get crazy. But what I would worry about if I was establishing a church is not me. I would worry about what people are going to distort the message afterwards. Oh, yeah. That's always the real issue.

The real issue is whenever you have something that you're going to call a church or a religion or you have a sacred area where you take it very, very seriously, you're going to have at least one person who has an elevated profile. There's going to be one person or people who run this thing that other people are going to look at like they're different than us. They are elevated. They are the people that are in charge of this. And when people have that feeling that they feel like they're the elevated one,

God, that gets tricky. It's so slippery. It's so hard for people to manage here's one of the ways that we try to avoid it because we never claim to be enlightened ourselves you know we're artists that's why i trust you yeah well we're we're we're creative artists and like a lot of artists we feel like when we're really doing our thing that there's a spiritual element of that, that your creativity and spirituality somehow seem like they're very strongly connected. There isn't any mythology about it. If we're basically emanations of a cosmos that's creative, then we're little

embodiments of creative energy. And that creative energy can be used for the positive or the negative in how you and it comes from the way that you view the world how you're going to take that and so as an emanation of creative energy an artist is just, you know, like an obvious symbol of that. And so we see that throughout history that all the religions, whether they agreed or disagreed, all used creative expression to get their message out. It's one of the things that unites all the different wisdom traditions and unites a lot of other stuff that's out that would consider itself outside of religion as well. I feel that creativity itself is the original kind of religious impulse. It's the way of knowing oneself, the way of knowing God. It's a means of worship. I mean, we look at the cave art and you say, you know, they weren't talking about sects or something or disagreeing necessarily as like religious kind of ideas and things like that. They were making a mark of meaning and left behind something that was meaningful to their tribe.

And I think that that's still what we're trying to do. And, you know, I think religion, because it scares the shit out of really intelligent people, for good reason, because it's such a mess in the world and created such a mess and so much divisiveness, something that's supposed to be about love that's caused so much heartache and damage. What I think is that when I told my friend Robert Jesse from the Council on Spiritual Practices, well, I'm spiritual but I'm not religious. You know, he was saying, you know, Alex, we can't let the fundamentalists own the word religion. Religion is too important a word. Religion is too important a word and what we need are courageous experiments in religion that could help us to get to the other side of the bell curve, the evolutionary edge.

Is there an evolving edge for religion? Could we get post-secular in the world? Can we imagine a world where people have – most of the people of the world have taken a sacrament of one kind or another and have realized that there's an infinite intelligence at the basis of the cosmos that they are an expression of, and that life is a divine display, a spectacle, you know, that God's gone to a lot of trouble to create. And so, you know, from the perspective of today, what? Because Toynbee, when he was writing about civilizations, talked about every civilization needs a spiritual core. And as a planetary civilization, you can't have one religion dominate.

It's impossible. It's just not possible. And so how do you unite a world spiritually? Well, my candidate is the creative arts. All the world cultures have some means of creative expression. We get to know that culture through their music, through their, you know, paintings, sculpture, various kinds of things. And that's how we get to know each other and see our connections, you know. And so as a potential, something that's been used by all world religions and something that as a de facto for the people who don't believe in God anymore, many of them still believe that artists are trying to do something authentic and truthful to their inner being. Isn't the word religion fairly loaded though? And isn't what's important the idea behind what you're trying to do, right? The idea is that you're trying to make this sacred place.

You're trying to make this amazing place where people can go and see expression and see, you know, the purity of your creative vision. Why, why connect that to a loaded word? I, because it's, as Jesse said in my book, I think it's too easy to run away from that. You know how a bad neighborhood gets, and it's just like oh, my God, there's only criminals who live here.

And then some artists show up, you know, and they start having their studios and various things like that. And sooner or later, a really beat up neighborhood will start to have some vitality. Cafe moves in. Creative energy starts to infiltrate into destructive energy. What I'm saying is if the artists would move back into the world of religion, we might clean up the neighborhood a little, you know, and make it more habitable for people to want to look at their relationship with spirit through even the lens of religion. But why religion, though? Because religion is associated in most people's minds with ancient traditions, ancient traditions that oftentimes stifle your behavior, tell you what to do, control you, and offer horrendous consequences for not complying.

That's what a lot of people think of when they think of the word religion. But you have this thing. But let me get to this real quick. You have this thing, this beautiful thing. Why even put a name to it? Why label it? And when you're labeling it, you're connecting it with all these other religions that are so problematic and you're going to have to explain your way out of that. Why do that instead of just have this amazing center?

Because I feel that we're intimately connected with whatever that religious impulse. And if you look at the – what is the primary religious experience? That is a mystical experience. Religio, to reconnect, to connect up, to link back. Is that what the word means? Yes, to relink, to reconnect. To connect up. To link back. Is that what the word means? Yes. To relink. To reconnect.

To what? The self. To God. The self and God. So that's the actual origin of the word religion? Religio? Yes. Is it a Latin word?

And French. French. And it's to reconnect. So the idea being that the religion or these churches were set up so that people could reconnect with God. So they go about their day. They're filled with troubles and strife and all sorts of stress. And they can go back to the church and they can reconnect with God through religion. If you go to Egypt or you go to India.

You just came back from Venice. Or you go to some of these. Gorgeous cathedrals that are a thousand years old. You go to these pilgrimage places and there is tremendous power because a lot of people invested a lot of love energy into a center. And they built a shrine to whatever they believed that spirit to be. And that is part of a long tradition of a connectedness with a, you know, their lens into the infinite. You know, whatever religion you're looking through. Iconic, aniconic.

Yes, they're a hell of a lot of trouble when you get to the secondary religious experience, which is everything else that you think about religion. The primary religious experience, every religion started with a mystical experience. And people are having those on acid every day now, you know. And so what do you disconnect from that whole tradition where people were connecting to the infinite before? You say, this has nothing to do with that, you know. Or do you say, hey, religion's fucked up, but what if we reimagine it? What if we reimagine God? And can't we do it and say, this has a lot going for it, this quest for the infinite, absolute mystery that's at the core of our being and the core of the cosmos, this quest to know that.

It leads to science. it leads to art, it's the quest to know the truth about the nature of reality. And so that quest is another reason why I think that if you harness that to creativity, just artists. Just artists. Artists hate dogma. You can't have a dogmatic. I mean, artists always disagree. And you're always going to have new vantage point.

You're always going to have one evolving point of view. That's part of the trouble of religion is that they get, you know, this is the right way and it's only like this. We're not going to look beyond the boundaries of what, you know, people made up long ago as the way it's supposed to be in another century when, you know, we didn't know any of the stuff that we know now. So that does make sense. So any good religion ought to, their view of reality, at least science ought to be incorporated into it. So you couldn't have a truthful religion without science. So are you planning on writing something out, like the tenets of this religion, the ethics of this religion?

We have that. We actually have liturgy. In order to become a church, you have to submit liturgy to the irs and the state attorney general and then we had to i'm not familiar with that word what's that word liturgy liturgy like a like a document like uh you know like stuff that you use on a regular basis in in your ceremonies so you have to have that in order to be recognized by the IRS? You don't have to. Yes, you do. But it's kind of—

It's part of the IRS requirement and the state attorney general. Do you have a liturgy? Do you have a liturgy? Okay, so you could say no and still— I guess you're right. You probably could say no. You could probably apply and maybe, you know— It's all in your head?

Relax? It's like a guy has to look over what you're doing and really question it and see if you've thought it out and stuff like that. So Alex published Art Psalms, which was a poetry book, and you've seen Art Psalms. So that was really submitted. I have a copy of it. Oh, good. That was submitted as Cosm Literature. Perfect.

That's where it gets really fascinating, is the tax-exempt status of religion. That's where it gets really fascinating, is the tax-exempt status of religion. Religion is so odd in that way that worshiping and being in a place where you worship, even if it's very clear that there's a lot of profit being made, you don't have to pay taxes on that. Yeah, I just want to tell you this, just a touch of the history of why we became a church, because it wasn't really ever our intention to become a church. All the way from the beginning, 1985, when we visioned the temple simultaneously, Alex and I, on our first MDMA journey, lying on the bed, we both came out of it having visioned this circular building, temple. What year was this? 1985.

We had recently moved to New York together. You guys were doing MDMA back in 1985 it was legal praise Jesus but we both saw this temple and we knew that this was sort of like our joint mission this was the thing we were going to do together

you know Alex always, we met in art school so Alex always had his art and I had my art we shared a studio but this was something we were going to do together. So we never thought we would become a church. But here we were building this sacred site. And then all through our life together, you know, we started visiting sacred sites. Like we just came from St. Mark's in Venice, and we see Chartres Cathedral, and we go there with groups of people and go on pilgrimage to these sacred, beautiful art places.

But anyway, the way we became a church was a friend of ours who started Sirius Satellite Network, actually. She's Martine Rothblatt. But she loves the work that, she loves Alex's work. She's Martine Rothblatt. But she loves the work that she loves Alex's work. She's a collector. She loves the work we're doing, Cosm, with the community and all this. And she said, you know,

you're doing everything the churches do. You're doing weddings, baby blessings, and memorials. You have a prayer book, you know, basically, you're doing everything the churches do, and you're not getting any of the benefits of what churches get. Business thinking. No, she's so smart,

really, and she paid a lawyer. She's the one that funded and granted us, you know, getting together with our guy who went through the process with us. It took a good long time. You have to basically write a lot of essays,

and then they give you more essays. And it was maybe three times through essays, and you write them all, and then you submit the liturgy. And eventually, just at the moment we were moving to the country, it was like the same minute, the church status just magically came in after four years. It was like all coming together, you know. So as it is, though, we have 40 acres, and then we had to fight with our town over every church in our town. And there's mosques and Buddhists, stupas and lots of Catholic and every kind of Protestant,

and they were not paying real estate tax. And we have this 40 acres, and they were raising our taxes 15% every year. Meanwhile, we're not making any money. Alex and I are volunteers at Cosm, by the way. And so we'd make nothing, we just give it away. And the whole place we're giving away, it belongs to the community. And the community is everybody who's spiritual and creative, but it tends to have a lot of psychedelophiles, people who feel like they've experienced the divine and they want a place to go ahead and talk about it. They wanted this in the city

when we were in Manhattan for five years. It was just a place where you could go and talk about this because it's legal to talk about it, and we would always have security and make sure there wasn't anything being passed around because we can't get into trouble because we're like really legitimate. We're doing this in a legitimate way. We have to took us four years to get our permits to do this building. Hold on a second.

You had security to make sure that people didn't pass drugs around? Well, we can't have anything visible. What you do that is private is your own business. If you can behave yourself, we watch out for you and we make a nice container. I understand that. But you had a bunch of people actually watching people to make sure that they didn't...

We always have security. They're gentle giants. We call them gentle giants. You have to have security when you're having... We have hundreds. We have thousands, well, like some of our full moons are from hundreds to a thousand people. We have large

groups of people. What do you mean by full moons? Well, that's what happened was a shaman told us that we had this whole idea of this temple we wanted to build, but where's your community? You know, building a temple is the work of a community, he said. So we're going to start full moon ceremonies in your home in

Brooklyn. So we did. We started in January of 2003, 164 consecutive full moons ago. We started them in our loft in Brooklyn. And then we went to, we got a place in Manhattan, 12,000 square feet. We did it for five years. Then we found this permanent location in Wappinger, New York. It's in the Hudson Valley, like 65 miles from the city. You can get there on the train. But we found this lovely old retreat center, all kind of imploding and, you know. And we've been, you know, working on it one building at a time. The carriage house, which is turning into Entheon, the first temple of visionary art that we really

came there to build, is building four. Actually, we have a 10 bedroom Victorian guest house and a office in our studio. So we have, you know, we have six buildings to work on and we're on building four. But anyway, this is like a little retreat center that we're leaving to our community, our spiritual, creative, cosmonaut community. It's fascinating that Martine was involved in it because she's also involved in artificial intelligence. I interviewed her for this sci-fi show that I did.

Did you? Yeah, and she has this robot version of her wife. Bina. Bina 48. You were there. She started a church. She and Bina started a church. It's called the Terrasem Movement.

You need to start a church. You should. The Church of Rogan. Roganology. Joey Diaz already has a church. We should just join his. Joey Diaz already has a church. We should just join his. Yeah, right. Joey Diaz has the church of what's happening now.

Cool. Oh, there's some great churches out there, really. I just think it's... Why should these Catholics get it all? You know what I mean? They definitely shouldn't get it all. No, no. I think after you're involved in the 100th child molestestation you probably should take your probably take it

away and that's that's like a super conservative number that's horrible people isn't that crazy that isn't religion religion doesn't uphold that that's just awful people yes but awful people all throughout that one religion i mean there's got to be some sort of a connection with suppression, suppression of sexuality, suppression of ideology, forcing people to behave in a certain way, and these blowbacks. Also, the fear. I mean, I was raised Catholic, and I went to Catholic school when I was a young kid. And I remember I didn't go to kindergarten. I just went right into first grade. And I remember the fear, the constant fear that they injected in you this this idea of what

religion is it was great for me because it it just queered me off religion so young so early off i was like oh okay well this is all nonsense because before that when i was young my parents were getting divorced and when my parents were splitting up um i was really scared i was really nervous and i was young. And there was a lot of violence going around. There was a lot of yelling and screaming. And I needed something. And so I remember when I was little, I was always talking about God.

And it was just like, well, there's got to be, if all these people around me are out of their mind and everyone's crazy, there's got to be God. So I was actually excited to go to Catholic school. I was excited to go to church. I thought of it as, well, maybe these people, these relatives and these family members that I live with are all crazy. But there's going to be a place that I can go where I'm going to be able to be loved. And it's going to be calm. And God has rules. And everyone's going to follow them.

And I went there. And I was like, oh, good Lord. No pun intended. This fucking place is worse. I was like, these people are out of their minds. My parents were going to put me in there for second grade and I literally told them I'd run away from home. I was like, I'm going

to find my way out of this. I'm like, I'm not doing this. And I was seven. I was like, this is not happening. Well, you had already become rational. At seven. You knew what was seven. I was like, this is not happening. Well, you had already become rational. At seven. Yeah. You knew what was right and what was not right. You knew what was bullshit.

You had a bullshit detector that was always acutely attuned. Well, that's one good thing about growing up in a really fucked up household. Is that you have a constant sense of danger because you're around danger all the time so you don't get to sleep cuddly you don't get to like rest calm and you you you have an acute awareness of all the possibilities wow so i mean ultimately that was a great thing for me i can i can really see how that it heightened your ability to also to always uh maintain a mindfulness yeah that's that's over everything it's what probably allows you to do so many things it's also there's you know there's a always a balance between mindfulness and paranoia

you don't want to be that guy that carries a gun to the bathroom. You know, there's, I know a lot of people that have surpassed this awareness and gone into this like acute paranoia. I have this statement that I've been saying a lot lately, but I think it's important to bring up. I don't think human beings are designed to take in the bad news of 7 billion people. I just don't think, I think the numbers that we deal with on a daily basis, with all the different stories of the world, they are too much for us to handle. It's not how, you're supposed to deal with what's going on in your community with a watchful eye on the rest of the world. You shouldn't be deeply engrossed in all of the most disgusting aspects of the rest of the world 24 hours a day. And I think that's one of the real problematic issues of our time with social media and with

the news that people have this distorted sense of what the world is. They think this world is just filled with violence and horror. No, the world is fine. It just occasionally has violence and horror. There's just so many people. And the world is so big that if you look at all those people in this giant globe that we're on, then you can kind of get a sense that the sky is falling. But, you know, but if you go outside right now in Woodland Hills, it's beautiful. News is the bad news.

It's nice. It's always the worst thing happening in every area. Sometimes it's not, but it's so rare. It's like occasionally they give you some good food. When they're feeding you poison, you're about to die. They slip you a piece of fruit. Yes, they do. I just don't think it's good for us.

I don't think it is. And I think that's the same thing with someone who grows up in a bad environment. I don't think it is. And I think that's the same thing with someone who grows up in a bad environment. I think you could get a distorted perception of what the world is and think that the bad environment that you're currently in is the entire world. And it can shape your perceptions and your interactions and therefore shape've truly tried to impart upon people that I've learned. So I believe that how you treat people and your interactions with people literally change your reality. And this is from mistakes that I've made. And this is from positive decisions that I've made. Because I think that when you look at life in a positive way and you try to treat people kind and you try to be nice to people and you try to move forward with that, the people that you interact with, they will get that. They will most likely respond more kindly to you. And the world changes. The world literally changes in front of you. It's billiard balls, you know, of kind acts, you know, that could be sending waves.

acts, you know, that could be sending waves, a smile could actually prevent somebody from committing suicide. If that's all it takes, maybe you should just go ahead and end it. Just a smile. Well, I heard from, you know, some kids who are like really desperate. Am I going to jump or am I not? Right. And some stranger looked at me and smiled. Yeah, that's...

And that stopped me from doing it. What stopped you, Alex? What stopped me? Acid stopped me from killing myself. That can do it. Because for me, I wondered whether God exists. Just like your question when you were seven. You were hoping that there was something that was not, you know, that there was a center of peace somewhere, I guess.

Now, I don't know that I would ever call God a center of peace. You know, I would say that that's one aspect of the entire you know meat storm of being alive i love that word but what a great expression the meat storm you should make a t-shirt it just says meat storm that's a great band yeah radical band be a radical band. Hudson Valley Meat Storm. That's right. We have a grinder attached to an industrial fan, folks. I wouldn't think about it that way. I would think about a bunch of people just jumping around, getting crazy.

There you go. Yeah. Meatstorm. What a great word. Well, I thought of that when I saw The Last Judgment by Michelangelo, speaking of Catholics. So you got to look at the good things. Right. Like, even though probably some really terrible stuff happened in those hallowed halls of the Vatican.

But again. Some really awesome art was there. It's amazing to go there. Have you ever seen the Sistine Chapel? No, really awesome art was there. Yeah. It's amazing to go there. Have you ever seen the Sistine Chapel? No, I'm actually going there this summer. We spent an entire day

from nine until five. We got there at the front of the line and got in, got a seat. We ran. Ran all the way. Ran all the way there.

You got to run all the way through the Vatican. Why? We've been there. What if you run? No, you don't want to do that the first time.

Yeah, you do. Why do you want to run? Well, we wanted to get to the Sistine. No, you don't want to do that the first time. Yeah, you do. Why do you want to run? Well, we wanted to get to the Sistine Chapel. Because you want to trip in the Sistine Chapel. Oh, so you got to take it and then get there in time

when it kicks in. And then we were there all day from nine to five drawing. We just sat, we got a seat, and we were just drawing all day. And our focus, it was just unbelievable. And the drawings came out really

amazing too and some of them are you guys but we had been to vatican before i have to say so when you go to the vatican for the first time you have to walk through so you can see all the amazingness on the way there because the sistine chapel is at the end of the tour you know you go out there and then afterwards you come back so so you you know on the way you want to take a look. But we had already done that. So we were like made the decision. This was our day to draw the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo is the man, you know. So I got it.

You know, that was all I wanted to see anyway. So everything else is just a blur. And then you get to the Sistine Chapel. It is quite fascinating that you're looking at the work of someone who lived hundreds of years ago. 500 years ago. Amazing. He didn't like everything that Catholics did, by the way. Nobody does. Well, he didn't, but he

did like being Catholic. He really did. He wrote about it and was very eloquent. And he loved being Catholic, but he didn't like the Pope telling him to paint the Sistine Chapel, for instance. Look at that. Yeah, look at that.

How long did it take for him to do that? I don't know. Years and years. The Last Judgment is the one that was, I guess, I've always called my favorite painting of all time. That's the meat storm. God. It's like, you know, and there were no clothed figures on that. Michelangelo was still alive when they got a – what they called a – he was a good fresco painter but he became basically Michelangelo's breeches painter. He was always thought of as the one who added clothing and drapery over the genitalia that

Michelangelo had painted. He loved the body. And he made what I would call an anthropocosm out of it, a kind of a temple of humanity. And it was very much about the nobility and connected with the Greek idealist tradition. The Greek idealist tradition is a psychedelic tradition from the Neoplatonic and the Platonic, you know, Socrates and all the rest. And the platonic, you know, Socrates and all the rest. So that wave was just getting – he was there when they dug up the Lao Kun, you know, that Greek sculpture with the snakes and the crazy stuff that really deeply influenced him.

I just want to say that the purity of the religion, the place where it's really true, like that beautiful, what it actually means at the core, at the heart core of any religion, is expressed through the art of that religion. So the other stuff is crap. You know what I mean? The way people act towards each other and stuff, that's their own deficits and their own obstacles coming out, you know, all over the place. Even the popes that have been horrible and allowed, you know, child molestation to perpetrate. Those people are sick people. That has nothing, they don't represent the purity of the religion, which is represented in the art.

But what is that? What is the purity of the religion? And doesn't it vary depending upon the individual? And why does that purity of the religion? What you're seeing is the purity of one man's expression, his view, his beautiful view of the world that we're so fortunate to be able to still look at 500 years later. What does that have to do with Catholicism? Universality. It was really more about they as much as we're saying all religions are connected and are basically talking about the one spirit that moves through all of us. You can call it creative spirit. I'd prefer to call it something like that rather than some of the names that get so heavily weighted. But I'm comfortable with the word God. To me, God means just ultimate mystery. Yeah, we discussed this a couple times on previous podcasts, how weighted that word is. It is. One of the things that I think is amazing about the Sistine Chapel, when you're looking at the two fingers touching, when you're looking at all these beautiful images, is those images, they become what people think of

when they think of God and they think of religion. Those images, it's almost like it takes a form on. And in taking on that form, it gives you a structure to house the ideas and the ideals of these religions. Like in seeing something, a visual representation, it becomes a real thing. I have to say, though. It's an idea. That's an idea that becomes embodied by that art.

I grew up in the Jewish tradition, which is a non-iconic tradition. And, you know, this is the Christian tradition really is a story of a person. They were born, they taught, they healed, they died, they rose. And in the Jewish tradition, it's non-embodied. So I, you know, I resonated with that when I first saw God in LSD. And it was really not a person's face at all. But I recognize that this is what people are talking about when they're talking about God, which is this energy that's, you know, interconnects everything, you know, it's like the force more than a face. So, but that was my experience of God. And I, and in that experience, when I was

20, I recognized this is what people are talking about when they say God. It's not physical. It's energetic. What I'm saying is that this guy creating these iconic works, he gives it a structure. He gives it like a scaffolding. And in that scaffolding of these beautiful paintings, you can kind of like form your own categories and have your own like chapters in your mind that exist. That it's almost like makes those things real. Whether or not they ever were real, whether or not there ever were angels on clouds, it's almost inconsequential because the result of it is kind of the same. If you believe that it's real. If you believe, and this is where religion

gets so fucking squirrely. Because, are you saying that Adam and Eve were the only two people in the world and everybody came from them? No. Absolutely not. Are you saying that there was a snake and he told Eve to, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. But, if you operate your

life as if those things were reality, and if you operate your life under the ideals that are transcribed and described in these beautiful paintings, it will become a real past in the sense that it will have a real meaning to you. It gets real weird in that way. It's very weird. And that's where I think art in general and your art is particularly important because the things that you paint, you can actually see. I've seen a lot of the things that you paint, maybe not specifically, but one of the things that I remember when I was first introduced to some of your art, I am i saw i forget which one it was i forget what i've seen so many of your pieces but i remember going oh this guy's seen it like a hundred percent you've been there like i when i thought of tryptamine experiences and i saw your art i was like oh the guy he nailed it i mean some people have come kind of close they've kind of but even though what

you're showing it doesn't exist in a static form in the tryptamine dimension like there's no way you can take a you know you take your phone you take a screenshot and you don't you want to when you're in there don't you want to press that button and say gotta say that no that's too good no can i just press the movie yeah how can i capture this well the problem also is it changes every fraction of a second. Exactly. The beautiful thing about the tryptamine experience is that whatever visual you're experiencing right now will morph into something else. And it was one of the most important lessons that I ever learned while tripping was in a DMT experience, I had a bunch of negative thoughts.

I don't remember what they were about, but I remember the visions that I was having turned dark and like a dark green and black and twisted, like they were contorted and compressed, like a visual representation of negative thinking. And then I realized that these, whatever these things are, entities, thoughts, whatever they were trying to express to me, the actual negative consequences of thinking like that, in front of me like a flower and then changed into this wildly beautiful geometric pattern that was like dancing in front of me and i realized like at that moment like i realized to myself i said i have to remember this i have to remember this and i have to figure out how to express this because this is an incredible realization that it's not this like abstract idea that, oh, you think negative, negative things happen. You think positive. No, you're

literally manifesting energy. You're manifesting a certain kind of energy with negative thinking. It's one of the reasons why we like getting away from negative people. When someone's like really negative and complaining and whining, you're just like oh, Jesus, I got to get out of here. You're like you really feel like they're going to suck me into their vortex. I've got to I've got to escape. Yeah, there is. There is. Let's see.

You could think of it like an amoeba around your physical body, a cloud of pulsating thought forms. And as you're imagining the beautiful elements of life and things, it seems to be in a kind of order and maybe kind of wafting upward. These are like the spiritual positive kind of frameworks sometimes that you're seeing life through when you're tripping and seeing the connections between things, lines forming and things like that, the more kind of organic geometries that show up. the more kind of organic geometries that show up. You see this intelligence of life and the light of divine intelligence that came through for Allison, like in this language. It seems to be weaving things together.

And when you're in touch with that infinite light that seems to be the source, with that infinite light that seems to be the source, then that is – you can keep it upwardly moving and very evolutionarily, cosmically, consciously moving forward. And when then you're thinking regretful thoughts or thinking negative thoughts and anger and things like that there's a constriction that goes on in your heart i think and kind of shuts things down and that kind of like you were saying twisting in and curling in and and darkening and and things are are all uh things that when you're journeying you you see them manifest literally in the flow of the theater of your imagination.

And so I think you really beautifully described that just in that I was totally there. I think it's a disease of consciousness. I think it's very similar to catching a cold. That, you know, you don't see the cold you don't see a disease you don't see it but it affects you and i think that there's an analogy to be made about diseases of consciousness that you can get locked into these terrible ways of looking at the world and i think that's one of the most important things about what you're trying to do in terms of building a community that if you can build a community and

build uh like a conscious ideology that that is sort of uh prescribed to people and establish a very positive and loving environment you can spread that like you can spread a disease you know or i mean for no for no better word, seeds of love or whatever, whatever you would call it. I mean, you could do it the wrong way. You know, you could do it what the Nazis did and do what Genghis Khan did and do it. Some horrible people throughout history have done. There's similar things in a lot of ways because they're diseases of ideas.

They're diseases of consciousness. Or you could do it the right way or a good way or a beneficial way or positive way. And it seems like throughout history, we almost have to see those negative ones to learn the consequences of letting these things happen. I mean, it's one of the reasons why Germany won't let in the Scientologists. They're like, hey, we've seen what happens when cults take over. Okay. We've got a deep history with fucked up group thinking. So let's just not let you guys in. And it's what we were talking about before the podcast. We were talking about Trump and what's going on in this country right now. And I was saying that I think it's probably a good idea to to have this moment where we realize like oh we really have to pay attention like we we can't just sit back and not participate anymore because look what's happened it's a mockery the whole system has like been exposed by this one guy as being a joke and it's always been a joke it's just been a joke that we've accepted.

You know, and we were talking about Hillary and all the criminal investigations that she's under and that somehow or another, this one person who we know is insincere is a better option than this other person who we know is a jerk-off. Like, where's the right and where's the wrong? I don't know.

It's rarely been an election where that isn't true. I thought Obama was a pretty clear choice, and there was a lot of celebrating afterwards. But, of course, then he disappointed people, like he predicted he would at his inauguration. He said, I'm not going to make everybody happy, and you're not going to always be happy with me. He predicted that, and he came through with that.

But I remember all the elections of my life. It was like, you know, I mean, I always voted for the least worse person. You know what I mean? I mean, I think Al Gore was up there. He was really good. And I liked him. He actually won.

Yeah. And he actually won. You know, it was coup d'etat. That's where the coup took place, right there, where corporate America took over. Yeah, it really did. I mean, well, that's where the coup took place right there, where corporate America took over. Yeah, it really did. I mean, well, it's also where the system that we're voting under is exposed. Like they're still using pieces of paper. And then also, did you ever see Hacking Democracy, the HBO documentary on the Diebold systems?

Oh, my God. Diebold, Alex's brother was a vice president there. He used to work there. He used to. He left there before they were making voting machines. Whoa. Yeah, they actually changed their name after that documentary.

Is that right? Yeah. Well, they established a voting machine where you could, I recommend everybody watch Hacking Democracy. I think it was from, I want to say 2007 or something like that. But it was a documentary where they exposed that these voting machines, not only can they be manipulated, they were designed to be manipulated. They were designed to have a third party entrance, like a third party could enter in data.

Like a third party could enter in data. And it's just madness that those machines are how our election got decided. And, you know, they've since then cleaned it up in some way. But still, it's a dirty system. Yeah. Doesn't it seem like we could actually have some encryption that each voter could vote online? Exactly. And do it in a minute.

Sure. And we'd know. Here's a perfect example. Banking. Everyone banks online. Who doesn't bank online? Who doesn't buy things online? Credit card transactions, people are like, whoa, it gets hacked.

How often? How often? How many people? What percentage of it? Is it enough to shift an election? I would say it's probably not. I would say it's not. I would say if you could make banking secure, you can make voting secure. Right. And the phone, they couldn't even get into that guy's phone. You can communicate instantaneously with people all throughout the world. We're not talking about sending a raven. You know, this isn't, you know, the 1300s. This is an interesting time.

And we're not taking advantage of the resources that are available to us as far as representing the actual people. But I think there's also a problem with that, too, is there's a lot of people that are just completely uneducated, uninterested, slovenly lazy people. And we have to energize those people. We have to reinvigorate their ideas of participation and of community. And you have to say like, look, you can't just sit on your couch and eat Twinkies and watch Beverly Hills housewives. You can't do that anymore. Because if you do, you're not allowed to complain about the world being fucked up because you're a part of the world being fucked up. And I think until we can energize people, until we can give people this sense that they actually can participate, and it is just a bunch of human beings that are trying to figure out the right and the wrong way to do things. I think there's a lot of that going on right now.

I think there's this ebb and flow of social media and positive aspects of it and negative aspects of it. But ultimately, I think a lot of that is just us learning to navigate the landscape, this new landscape, this digital interconnected landscape that's unprecedented in human history. I don't think we can understand it because we're a part of it. I mean, I think we can sort of, we're talking about it, right? But I don't think if we look back in history and they, a thousand years from now, look at this day, the way we're looking at Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci or Genghis Khan or anyone, you look back and you go, wow, what a crazy time. That's nothing compared to today. Today is the craziest time ever. The emergence of artificial intelligence, the

emergence of a very bizarre method of communication where you can instantaneously reach people on the entire planet, where data is shared like that amongst hundreds of millions of people instantly. It's a new world. It's a fucking crazy new world. It's a birth. It is literally like a birth. It's a fucking crazy new world. It's a birth. It is literally like a birth. It's like an organism coming out of an egg and poking its head out. And right now the shell's being chipped and the head's popping up,

but this fucking thing's going to emerge and it's going to fly. Well, Teilhard de Chardin talked about the neosphere, about the thinking layer of the Earth, you know. And that's really what enabled, I mean, you talked about it in the mid-20th century. And so this thinking layer, thinking atmosphere that's around the Earth now through satellites, through all of the interactive technology that we're currently speaking on, you know, is a new body for the soul of humanity. You know, this is now what we're working on now is the theosphere. You know, that's what we've got to tap and access.

Now we have connectedness with each other. Now, as a symbol, that should really clue us into something important. If we look at other nature systems like the mycelial intelligence that weaves the woods together and that weaves our entire soil and makes it alive really uh these are spores uh connected by fibers and that's what we are well if you can't explain what what's going on in the pacific northwest in regards to that like how enormous the actual individual organism of mycelial connection is in the Pacific Northwest. It's essentially like someone described it. It might have been McKenna as like a thousand gray whales.

Like that's how big this organism is. And it's essentially one interconnected mushroom. Like, whoa. Yeah. The biggest being on Earth is a mushroom. Exactly. Well, it's the oldest beings as well. You know, we're more like mushrooms than any other plant.

Yes, yes. They actually breathe in oxygen and breathe out carbon dioxide like people. You know, I've been incredibly fascinated over the last few months with plant intelligence and with downwind smell it and become bitter so that it discourages predation. And animals were starving. The downwind animals were starving because they wouldn't eat the bushes from the trees that had taken the scent of the trees that were up north. I mean, it's madness.

They're literally sending out a signal to the other plants hey hit the alarm we're getting eaten they're communicating with each other absolutely it's the underground and overground network of plant intelligence yes I think of basically the festival culture as being mushrooms that are growing out of the underground intelligence. Like raves and stuff like that? Exactly. Those are the little fruiting bodies. Not Coachella, though, right?

I don't know what kind of a mushroom that is. What about South by Southwest? Burning Man. Burning Man. We're going to be at Burning Man this summer. I just want to tell everybody out there, come and be a part of the Dr. Brawner foam dome camp and get yourself sprayed with foam and see us paint our mural. Dr. Brawner, the hemp soap?

Yeah. The hemp soap? We're going to be in the MAPS Brawner camp. The MAPS is the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, many of us know. Yeah. And they have the Zendo, where people go when they need some help. And then there's also... What?

Wait a minute. What's that mean? The Zendo. That's where, you know, the rangers, when they go around and they find people who are having a bad time, they go to the Zendo and they take care of them. They're helped. They call it the Zendo? Oh, yeah.

We have a Zendo at Cosmo. What do you mean? It's for and to chill out, to get away from the frenetic energy and just have a place of peace. Is this it? This is the Zendo? Yeah, the Zendo from Maps. Oh, you know that smells like feet. It's really beautiful, and it sounds strange, but it's made out of wood and bamboo and cardboard. So how do they construct that out in the middle of the Burning Man?

They bring it in pieces and put it up, erect it. They do everything else there. Wow. How long does it take to put that together? People come in like a week or two ahead of time, depending on how complex your put together is. But we did a dome in 2006 with MAPS and Matt Atwood, who did the infrastructure. And it was called the Entheon Village. And it was the Entheon Village for years.

Alex named it. So now we have Entheon growing in Cosm, but it used to be at Burning Man. But anyway, do you go? No, I don't go. I can't be around that many hippies. It's all kinds of people but it is the freest place on earth it's certainly infested with hippies though let's be honest with ourselves well no okay people who are using sacrament i i want to take objection for a moment

and speak for the hippies uh because because i think that this is like one of the last places where it's okay, you know, like it's no longer okay to say nigger or queer, okay? Or, you know, unless you're of that. Right, right. You know, so if you're a hippie, maybe you could call another hippie a dirty hippie. Yeah, but I'm kind of a hippie. Okay. Are you? Yeah.

Okay. So there you go. All right. I'm nice to people. I'm always giving out hugs. I'm essentially a weird version of a hippie. Hippie. But I don't fit into the mold because I'm also a cage-fighting commentator. I like the diversity.

And, you know, Burning Man used to have the genital portrait studio and the— Genital portrait studio where you pose? Thunderdome. Thunderdome. You would love Thunderdome. Thunderdome. You would love Thunderdome. You say this like I should know. Fuck. They had a shooting range. Yeah, the drive-by shooting range. With guns? You shoot guns at Burning Man?

Used to be. They have open bars there and they're giving it all away. The thing about Burning Man is it's a gift economy. So it's an experiment in gift economy. You're not... Once you get in gift economy. Once you get in, and it costs something to get in, of course, but once you get in, it's like, you know, you don't take your wallet out. You can't pay for anything

and there's no bartering. It's only gifting. And people give it away. Are these guys fighting with sticks? Yeah. There's the Thunderdome. They're bashing each other. They're like Nerf sticks. They don't really hurt each other, but they knock them. They try to knock them off of their perch there. They're swinging on those ropes in that dome.

It's a dome frame. Anyway, there's all kinds. There's 80,000 people there. It's the best, biggest, most amazing environment. It's like being on the moon. It's like being nowhere else on earth. You have to always carry your dust mask and your goggles and your hair covering and your camelback. It's so drying that you have to be drinking like a couple gallons a day, you know.

There's no insects there. There is not a blade of any kind of life there. It's like walking on the moon, seriously. Except you can breathe, but you have to have a face face myth because the dust storms just come up at every moment It's anyone done a documentary on it. Oh many many The years so when you're there there's dudes ticking cameras in your face isn't that sort of you have to have permission Everything is very regulated now, and I understand they're buying land So I'm hoping they'll have some because they've been you'll

have some infrastructure you said that like somebody offered you a a beautiful cake they're buying land well buying land is good for our community we should own our own places of of attraction because that is the way you gain transformational power. Power to transform. You basically have a place and you build that infrastructure. This culture. Look at the way it's structured. Isn't that beautiful?

That's really cool. It really is beautiful. The center part is called the playa and it's about nine feet across from end to end, like the big circle. Nine miles. Nine miles. Nine miles. Nine miles.

It's nine feet. Nine miles across. And you can walk the whole way. A lot of people have art cars. That's nine miles? Well, from edge to edge. That's incredible. Outer edge.

It's mammoth. It's good work. Good run. 60,000 people. It's a good run, Jamie. 60 to 80. 60 to 80,000 people. And everybody takes care of each other.

You have to have your own food. You've got to come in there with water, food, and everything. And you're not allowed to pour or drop anything on the ground. If you have, and they have full showers. Brawner camp is, you know, you get foamed. You know, they have a big foam dome. But you've got to collect all that water. Right. have a big foam dome so but you kind of collect all that water right and they collect them in

these great big uh gray water tankers and take them away and bring in fresh water it's like they're practicing setting up a village in in in like of the apocalypse i'm telling you this is the practice ready yeah these people can go in in a week or two i mean the government i mean the army went in there to study this because they can do this in a couple of weeks. They put it all together. Wow. So it's very much apocalyptic preparation. I think you would get a great benefit from seeing it.

I think I'd get material out of it. You could. Totally. Come be with our camp. When is it? What time does it take place? It is the week that leads to Labor Day weekend. What's that?

I don't even know. That's like the first weekend of – Early September. The first Monday of September is Labor Day. Oh, okay. So it's the weekend before the Monday of Labor Day, and they have – the temple burn is on Saturday night. It's Sunday. I mean, it's Sunday night, and the man is burned on Saturday night.

So when the man is burned, 80,000 people come together to see it. It's like everybody comes in a big circle around the man. Where's the man? There he is. I think I'd be like, I've got to get the fuck out of here. And you know what? They have 1,000 fire spinners around the man. You have to audition to be a fire spinner around the man, but they have about a thousand of them.

And they're spinning whips, my friend Joe. They're spinning swords and poi and all kinds of hula hoops are on fire. It's the most amazing thing. And you go there on your art car. You're not allowed to go in the playa at all unless your car is approved as an art car. That means it has to be. Show some art cars. Art cars.

Art cars are incredible. They've got big ships like rolling along the playa. They have gigantic three-story structures that move. So they have to kind of be enhancing the environment. They do. And they have to be art. Oh, look at that thing. They they have to kind of be enhancing the environment. They do. And they have to be art. Oh, look at that thing. They have to be art. And the reason why they even do them at all in one big way is so that you can get on the top of them so that you can see over everybody else when

you go to see the man and you can see all these fire spinners that are all around this. You want to be up high. Jamie, go back to the dinosaur. Your party is up there. You've got your own DJ. Seriously, this car has got its own DJ. The Mayan Warrior. Alex painted it. And we're going to be on the Mayan Warrior this year. So you take this thing

back with you? How does that work? Yes, people pay year round to park these things in Gerlatch. What's Gurlatch? Gurlatch is the non-town. It's like this town that grew up around Burning Man. They have one store.

It's like you drive into this moon-like planet. This place is where wallboard is made. So if you peeled off the paper, that's what the playa is like. And it's like a skin. You're not allowed to drop peanut shells or anything on the ground. And you have to collect everything. So it's extremely eco. And you learn about saving water.

You can't believe how much you try to save water. I love the Mayan. That's beautiful. There's the Mayan water. Your art card is beautiful. Isn't it beautiful? What did you use to illuminate it with? There is.

All the painting is the opposite. Well, just click on one. Stick on it. Stop flipping around. Just go to one. That will show the mask painting area that I did. They put neon all over it, of course. Yeah.

How do you power that thing? They do it. They do it. They all do it. They all have to have light on it. You can't even have a bicycle on the playa without LEDs on it. But what is illuminating this? I mean, this is for people listening alone.

This thing is filled with beautiful lights. And the flower of life is in one of them. And what are the other ones? The blue ones above the flower of life? There's more flower of life. More flower of life. But are the other ones the blue ones above the flower of life there's more flower more flowers like there's a second story and if you scroll down a little bit you'll see there's a third story see those people up there that's royalty those are the DJs and the royalty of royalty I'm just joking but really it's like you know the people who own the mine warrior

up there and their best friends oh I thought it was your friends oh no no alex painted it it was a commission yeah oh so somebody owns it listen to this they brought it from mexico city on its own trailer they drove it from mexico city to cause them i would have thought it was a part of their mexicans i'm serious if i was in the border the border patrol i'll be like everybody out get out well it was all enclosed in this trail i was was in the border, the border patrol, I'd be like, everybody out. Get out of there. Well, it was all enclosed in this trail. I was enclosed in the trail. Oh, yeah, definitely enclosed.

Don't worry. We looked. There's no Mexicans in here sneaking across the border. Aztec warrior Trojan horse. Alex's collectors are probably, you know, the most, you know, the most, well, meaning, you know, they have the most means of all Mexicans, I would say. What are those stacks? The stack things?

There's two stacks. Yeah, it looks like cinder blocks. Those are speakers. Oh, Jesus Christ, you're going to go deaf. It's a disco. You're all going to go deaf. You bring your own DJ, baby. What if the music's annoying?

What kind of music are you playing? Oh, only cool shit, for sure. We go to their parties. See, these are people that produce our events in Mexico City. And they sponsor us going down there and doing, you know, like four events for a visit. And we've done it a few times. So they'll do a workshop. They'll do a day lecture.

You know, they'll do a, and then they'll do an evening event. And the evening event is an electronic dance music party at a big place, you know. And we're on stage painting. So these are producers. But they produce for bigger names than us. I mean, way bigger. But we do our thing down there. And so you've got a bunch of bikes behind it as well.

Is that what that is? Or is that people parking their bikes? That's probably parking. You know, they come up. Hey, can we come up and have a ride and stuff? You need a bike, too, though. You've got to have one of these and a bike. Yeah.

Some people have motor, well, they have to have a, well, I don't know. When people find you out there, though, don't they give you ear beatings? Don't they find you and then go, Alex, I just want to tell you, man. You have your goggles. No, your goggles, your mask, your hair covered. Oh, you're hiding. You are completely enclosed. You're pretty much.

Do you want to do that though? Don't you want to be open? Why do you want to hide? Well, we go in and we paint our mural. That's when we see people. We'll be findable there. That's our station. You can always come and find us at the foam dome at our 32-foot mural that we'll be painting

for the whole time. The idea of wandering around with a gas mask on and goggles and headdress in the middle of a gypsum forest. It's amazing. It sounds so ridiculous. Look at this guy. Okay. That guy's got it down.

Look at him. I like that. They dress up. That guy owes rent for sure. Some of these people are extremely wealthy. Look at Bronner. A few. These people.

No, tons. This is the, I would say, the highest end festival I've ever been to. That guy's definitely broke. Guaranteed. Are you kidding me? You know how much that costume costs? You must be joking. He saved up all year, and now he's empty.

Look at that guy. It looks like the alien that they found in the movie Alien, the guy that's in the chair. The guy from Google comes to this. Oh, the guy from Google. Who's that? Young people. The children of the inventors. You sound like a spokesperson for this. I love Google. Who's that? Young people. The children of the inventors. You sound like a spokesperson for this.

I love it. I don't go everywhere either. We've only been, this will be our fifth time. Jamie, go back to that one. The girl that's got that blue one above there, the blue light one. That seems like some industrial strength gas mask type shit. You don't have to have a gas mask. You have to have a particle mask.

What about your eyes? Because it's dust. You have to have goggles. So you need goggles? You have to have goggles. Yeah, You need to get kind of swim goggles I sense your enthusiasm I appreciate it but fuck that place Oh well

I have had a good time there We went there when Zeno was 14 It was the first time we went We were invited Every time we've gone somebody's brought us Zena's our daughter. She lives in Hollywood. Will Smith's there?

But she was 14, and we were there. Will Smith goes to Burning Man. Everybody goes to Burning Man. A lot of freaks would use it like Mecca. You go once. It's a hajj, if you're a freak. Well, you don't go to the hajj every year. We've been to five times.

It seems like this is a great idea in a shitty spot, and this could be recreated somewhere habitable. Mm. Oh, definitely. Well, you don't go to the Hajj every year. We've been to five times. If you- It seems like this is a great idea in a shitty spot and this could be recreated somewhere habitable. How about that? No, it's perfect in so many ways. It's possible. You've got to experience it. Here's the reason.

It's an art festival. That's what it is. And so they make a sculpture and they put it on the bare ground. It's like going into a white gallery. Right. You know, it's like going into a white gallery. It's like going into a whiteout and then you put an object there and frankly, you've got a lot of space around it.

So you can really look at amazing sculptures. You should see Burning Man's sculpture. It's about seeing the art. That's right. So it's not for everybody. It's inhospitable. But I think that it's an extraordinary outgrowth of psychedelic visionary culture. I'm totally joking around, obviously.

Of course. When I'm mocking it, but that's my nature. Now look at this. Alex, look at this guy. I know. I've seen fire before. And you know, we have a sculpture at Cosm that was on the playa. It's a two-story sculpture at Cosm. And we're getting another one.

People don't know what to do with them afterwards. They want some place to put them. Well, Cosm has 40 acres, so we're going to end up with probably more. So they're going to ship Burning Man sculptures? No, we do that. Oh, you're going to ship them? They give it to us. We pay for them.

That's amazing. Now look at that. Who is that? And it probably lights up at night. That's incredible. And you go out there and you just visit all these sculptures. It's nine miles of sculpture. You just go, you ride your bike from sculpture to sculpture.

Many of them, most of them are interactive. So you can go inside of them. You can climb up in them. Sometimes they have swings and a lot of them have fire coming out. That's incredible. That's beautiful. Because you can light things on fire there. That's what makes it so exciting too.

That's really pretty. This is the Belgian waffle. Here's beautiful. Because you can light things on fire there. That's what makes it so exciting, too. That's really pretty. Oh, this is the Belgian waffle. Oh, here's Kate Roddenbush. That's Kate Roddenbush. We have a Kate Roddenbush sculpture at Casa. A what? Kate Roddenbush. She does laser-cut, cold-rolled steel sculptures that are interactive.

Like, they're pods. You sit in them. They're real comfy. They're cozy. Whoa, this is amazing. Yeah. We're looking at, for people that are listening, we're looking at this. How about Mars One? Look at Mars One sculptures on the floor. For people that are

listening, we're looking at this geometric object that's circular but it's got squared edges. What would you call that? What is that? Wicks? What is that? It is a sacred geometric form and these guys are from San Francisco.

We know these guys. Whatever this geometric form is inside. Are they the ones making my chandelier? Yes, yes. They're making my chandeliers for Entheon. I'm going to have chandeliers where they turn and the light falls on people. It's environmental. What is it?

It's called, Jamie, Fest 300, a sneak peek at the coolest art coming to Burning Man. Oh, honey. Look at that. What's that? So you can see this online if you go Google it. It's really stunning, this image. Okay, so there's a magazine that has a bunch of these images. Oh god. That's amazing That's cool almost worth going. Yeah

Maybe if you bring a big tour bus Yeah, well we bring an RV you won't you don't want to come Joe without an RV you want to come with an RV So you have your home house Are you kidding? No, we don't care. How long does it take to get out there? Where is it? Let's see. Tens of thousands of people do camp. Nine hours from here. Where is it? It's Black Rock City out in... It's about an hour

from Reno. It's in Nevada. It's in Nevada. It's probably got a lot of nuclear energy out there. God knows. It's where they do those tests. You ever see that animated GIF? It's like a little movie tests. You ever see that animated GIF? It's like a little movie of all the nuclear tests that they've done in Nevada. Shit.

Woo. Might explain a lot. Yeah. Explain a lot about what's going on out there. Hundreds of them. Just do-do-do-do-do-do-do. They did this thing from like 1940, whatever it was, the time when they detonated the first atomic bomb to present. It's the bottom of a sea that once was.

It's made of crushed shell. And, you know, it feels like sand, but if you walk on it, you won't be able to use your feet in the middle of the winter. What? What I'm saying is it lasts. What does that mean, moisture out of your feet? You won't be able to use your feet in the middle of the winter. What does that mean?

They're cracking. They're cracking. Even in the middle of winter winter. They're cracking. They're cracking. Even in the middle of winter. I did it once. I'm just telling you. I had to walk back from the man to our camp without any shoes because I lost my shoes. And I walked back through. And it feels like sand at first.

But then it's like knives. You're like little tiny little knives. They're like shells. It's like crushed shells. And it messed like knives. You're like little tiny little knives. They're like shells. It's like crushed shells. And it messed up your feet? And all winter I was dealing with cracked feet. Happy playa feet burning. See, you have to wear boots and really cover up.

And it gets to be like 110 degrees in the day and 40 degrees at night. Sounds like you're trying to keep me off. I know, I know. Trying to keep me off the playa. There's too many things. Well, we're building a place at Cosm that is going to house some of the sculptures and have little

sculptural areas. And we have these small gatherings by comparison to that. They'll never be huge like that. But hundreds of people will gather. So it can still feel kind of tribal and community-oriented. But, you know, a lot of the same music is enjoyed.

We always have fire circle and we always have fire spinning. We actually teach fire spinning at Cosmo. And we have some fire sculptures. Did you worry about that getting out of hand? Like fire, all that fire spinning around? Those people are the most cautious. And we also have a relationship with the fire department there in our town. We have a sheriff on property at each event where there are large numbers of people.

And so we, you know, safety first. But there's ways of doing it. So when do you anticipate this entire thing, the entire Cosm? We should tell everybody that means Chapel of Sacred Mirrors. That's what Cosm stands for. And when do you anticipate that being fully operational and in action? Well, right now it is open. We're open like four days a week so that people, we have an ongoing stream of people who just are visitors.

And there are small art exhibits that are on display now. We're working on Entheon. That's where the grand exhibit will be housed. And the exhibit that we had on display for five years in the city, that is not currently on display. The sacred mirrors are not there, but they will be in the city. That is not currently on display. The sacred mirrors are not there, but they will be in the new space. And so the new space, as we said, we're thinking will open sometime in 2017, probably toward the end of the year. And then as we can, we will build the outside of it, the sculpture. It's just a matter of how many years it's going to take. It's going to probably take a few years.

You could win the Powerball lotto. Yeah. And then you would be able to do it real fast. Massive donations can come in. All these things can happen. You're much more likely to get donations. Yes. I think all these things can happen. I mean, the Kickstarter thing.

Look, Joe, you were really helpful to us when the last time we did the podcast there was definitely a rogan bump that happened to the kickstarter that took us to a new level well the good news is that there's probably like how many more million people listening now like how many years ago was it that you guys came on last three years 13 so that was we were getting probably like 4 million downloads a month. Probably triple that now, I'd say. At least. From what it was three years ago. At least triple.

And then with the YouTube. Yeah, plus the YouTube, yeah. So it's probably like, we're in the neighborhood of 30 million downloads a month. Well, thank you for joining us and being a temple builder. Joining us? Temple builder? You are. You're helping us build this

implicating me in something um i think that there's going to be a lot of people that are excited about it i think what the idea behind it is beautiful the idea that you guys are leaving it for the community and building it for the community is beautiful and uh that's one of the best arguments for religion that i've ever heard. And best arguments for having a religion be tax exempt that I've ever heard. I mean, you guys are literally doing it for other people. You're doing it for everybody. It's awesome. And you know, your artwork is, I'm just a huge fan of what you do. And I just think that the design itself is literally, like I said, probably the coolest building on the planet. And it's a real, I mean, what you're doing is

essentially an extension of the great works of all these, you know, when you're talking about the Sistine Chapel, or if you're talking about the Egyptian pyramids, or any of these sacred sites that exist all throughout the world, you're doing a modern version of that. And it's amazing. It's really, really cool. Alex's 50 greatest works, I think, will be on view there in their original form. Not Giclés, but the actual paintings that Alex stroked with his own hand. And some of them have become really iconic to people. There are a lot of people out there that have Alex's posters and T-shirts. Oh, I have a bunch.

And Giclés and everything. But to see the originals, that's a study for other artists. What is a Giclé? To see the originals, that's a study for other artists. What is a giclee? That's like the prints that a lot of people have, the limited edition prints that they have of paintings that wonderful labor-intensive art is made. I've never heard that word. You ever heard that word?

It's a print. Limited edition prints. I've never heard it said. I've read it. I thought it was a gleeky or something. Yeah. Well, you know, the other thing about Antheon is that it's going to display the work of the international visionary art movement. And these are – I mean, if you liked my stuff, you should see some of the young people that are making art out of their journeys now. They're evolving beyond my work.

You know, they're evolving beyond, you know, my work. Right. And also, I think they're building an encyclopedia of these dimensions of altered states that people can say it was something like that. Well, it's very specific in that if you go back before the 1960s and you look at the art, it really didn't represent the trips. It just didn't. And you look at it now, there's a giant body of art that represents these psychedelic trips that really didn't exist before. So in a lot of ways, it is a quiet new chapter in the world of art that one day I think people are going to look back on.

And once we realize the ridiculousness of the prohibition on drugs, especially on psychedelic drugs, non-toxic, non-problematic as far as like health repercussions. And you wonder like what was it about our restrictive society that put this sweeping comprehensive ban on psychedelic substances in 1970? And what were the ramifications? What were the consequences on society so you know there was no organic there was no eco there was no eco careers there was there was no um you know save the planet talk climate change we never heard about that growing up well there was there was people that were talking about it and there were certainly certainly people that were recycling and composting and doing things along those lines and trying to leave a smaller footprint back then aware of it. But as far as a gigantic global conscious movement and also the urgency that's attached to it today, where people are stepping back and they're looking at islands disappearing.

And they're looking at the rising sea levels, and they go, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is real. This is actually happening inside of our lifetime there's there's a lot going on that i think we're we're we're in the middle of and i think uh this visionary art that that is going on right now we were sort of in the middle of that i think as we look back on it or as people past us look back on it they're going to say this is a very specific era this was an era like if you go back and look at religious history and you look at the the Enlightenment you look at the various styles of art that's connected to religion or cultural change you see these big shifts I think the visionary art of psychedelics is a big shift.

It's huge. I think that it's showing that the big news today is the sacramental sort of reformation, that there's a return of the sacrament to the West. It's been demonized and hidden for thousands of years. Now it's back, and you're not going to get rid of it. Now it's here because we need it. There's nothing that's going to turn consciousness around toward a sacred planet that wants to save itself from self-destruction like psychedelics. There is no greater prescription for soul medicine than this is the stuff that is curing all of the traumatic stress of the vets. Marijuana is leading the way in the medicinals and opening the door literally for the sacred drugs, the return of the sacred drugs. We don't even have a context established in America, but it's beginning.

The UDV Church won their right to use the sacrament. The Native American Church has peyote. There is legal precedent for religious use already, as there has been throughout history, except for the last couple thousand years. Well, in this country, as you were talking about with MDMA, I mean, just really the last few decades. And 5-methoxydimethyltryptamine, I bought that stuff online, like in 2001 or something like that. You could just order it from some chemical company. They sent you a bottle of it. You get the whole world high. I remember that. Yeah, it was great times. Yes, it was. And somehow,

we've got to find a way to incorporate these sacraments? Well, I think they're being incorporated. And I think one of the things that you said that you just sort of glossed over, but it's incredibly important, is that marijuana is the door opener. Marijuana is the guy that you let into the party that has the magic dust. And he went, and he blew it on everybody. Because once that gets in, and especially edible marijuana, because edible marijuana is a psychedelic drug. And many people don't know it

and that's one of the reasons why when people eat brownies or something they'll say oh my god someone laced the brownie no that's what it is that that is the most potent form of marijuana is the edible form of marijuana and it is very visionary especially in high doses it's incredibly introspective acid like in a lot of ways of ways, you get a perspective that is life-changing and shifting. And it's one of those directional shifts where even if it's a small degree of change over the course of the rest of your life, that small degree of change could equal a very large shift in the direction that you're going. As you continue down your path, that slight turn to the right will make a huge difference five years from now,

10 years from now. I think marijuana becoming legal in Colorado and us seeing not just the positive benefits in terms of the community, you're looking at people that are making way more money

than they've ever made before. You're looking at housing prices, real estate prices going up, people having a new sense of community where they're like, oh, there's others like us. It's like a magnet for freaks. And they've all flown into Colorado and set up shop there. It's fascinating. I did a show there a couple months ago at the Belco Theater,

and it was amazing. It was like this place has changed in a year. I recorded my last comedy special about two years ago, two years in August in Colorado. And then I did the most recent one about six months ago in Colorado, the most recent show that I did there. And I could feel the shift. When you're driving down the street, you see the difference. There's pot everywhere. There's people are smiling. The lowest incidence of drunk driving they've ever recorded.

Lowest incidence of violent crime. Everything is dropping. Suicide rates. Yes. Half. Yes. And money. The money that the state is making is insane.

They literally have a surplus of taxes. It's an attractor. They've made more money from taxes, from marijuana than they did from alcohol for the first time ever. No one's ever done that. And you've got this happy community. And now Seattle has entered into the mix. Now Washington, D.C. is entering into the mix. In November, California is going to vote on it. I guarantee it's going to go through. You think? Oh, yes. Of course it is. Well, just try to send a little blessing New York way, okay? Because New York is so far behind.

I'm so ashamed of us. Come on. We've got to move that direction. And our people will just love it so much. I think that just the ideologies that were in place that stopped it, they're eroding. Those people are too old. They're too out of touch. They don't understand the mindset of the young people.

And they've really underestimated the power of this movement. This is a wave, and you can't suppress it anymore. It's a movement of people that are upwardly spiraling. They're people that are healthy, beautiful, positive, ecological, save the planet, educated, more thinking people. It's such an attractor. Yes. And so everybody wants to be part of it. They wonder what is that.

It can have a power. It's what we were talking about earlier when we were talking about plant intelligence. There is an intelligence in marijuana, an absolute undoubted intelligence. And it exists, I think, in all plants. It exists in funguses as well. Not all plants are mirroring systems inside of the human body like cannabis. Since it was probably the original or one of the original cultivated plants, I think that humanity over the millennia worked out a symbiotic relationship with this plant.

And so we have the endocannabinoid system. Yeah. And I would say that probably many of our health deficiencies are because we're not getting our cannabis. THC deficiencies. No. It's in half of our medicine. For 87 years, it's been part of the American pharmacopoeia. Please allow us to continue to use it. No, it was struck down. And so it's been repressed since then.

And a lot of it has just been pure racism. Actually, that's the cause of it. Well, that was what those recent papers were released about the Nixon administration. It's one of the ways they demonize the black rights movement, civil rights movement, and also the anti-war movement. Absolutely. Is they attack marijuana and they attacked psychedelic drugs. And that was the reason why they passed that sweeping legislation in the first place. Was just to be able to have a reason to arrest those people.

They knew they could attack the communities. Yes. And in attacking those communities, the best way to do it was to go after the drugs. Nixon hated them. And Nixon was a traitor to America. Nixon was probably, with Bush, one of the worst we've ever experienced. And through his hatred and venom,

we have the drug war that now for over 40 years we've just been laboring under the boot of a fascist traitor that once resigned from office. He was. He was impeached, really. But I wanted to go back to what you were saying about fungus because people sometimes ask, what is LSD? What does it look like? What is it? And I wanted to mention that recently there's microscopic, you know, images of, well, what it is, is it's fungus growing on rye. So there's these microscopic images that you can call up and look at that see the LSD. It looks like a field of little tiny mushrooms. That's all

just microscopic. Well, you remember the, the remember the revelation that they had a few years back when they were trying to figure out what caused the Salem witch trials. And one of the leading theories was that they had had a late frost and the late frost had caused these funguses to grow on bread, ergot to grow on bread. these funguses to grow on bread, ergot to grow on bread. And that when that happened, these people were experiencing very acid-like effects from eating bread.

And then they started freaking out and blaming people for it and thinking that they were being possessed. And it was a whole wave of paranoia that came from that. It's unbelievably fascinating when you think about it that way. It really is. It's actually the to be cured from ergotism this Bishop Flaubert

I guess He was responsible for Chartres Cathedral Like a thousand years ago basically prayed to Mary and said if you'll cure me of this ergotism which is very dangerous you know but it leads to many visions, I will build you the most beautiful temple ever built, you know. And so he was cured and he did found a shark cathedral.

But as a result. So that's one of the cool things about ergotism and ergot. But the coolest thing is definitely LSD and Hoffman's ability to stabilize that. And then, so basically the coolest thing about the psychedelics to me is that they, and the science that has been done is the Good Friday experiment and Roland Griffith's work. And that has basically given us the best evidence for the existence of God, because 65% of people who take psilocybin in a safe setting and they're spiritually inclined will have a full-blown mystical experience. That's now science. It's proven. So a majority

of people who take a psychedelic, basically, in in a positive setting and they don't, you know, they're not pre-schizo themselves, you know, not a borderline personality. If you're stable. Pre-schizo. Yeah, that's important to put out, you know, because I think that a lot of people think that psychedelics are for everybody. But unfortunately, there's some folks amongst us that have a very difficult time with just regular stable sobriety and mental issues. But I think in the end, they're going to, with science, medicine and science, I think what's going to be found out is that these psychedelics are going to cure schizophrenia. I really think that when they use it properly, because that's what the science is doing now, they're experimenting with all kinds of… With schizophrenics?

What science is being done? I'm not sure if there's any studies with schizophrenics. But because it mirrors schizophrenia, it may be… I don't know. I think that research will be done related to all kinds of psychological illness. But anyway, it's curing so many things. It can cure cluster headaches. And the studies are, you know, like Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins,

all the big universities that MAPS can get funding for. They're funding all that research. Well, MAPS is really fascinating and amazing. And what they've done is just add an actual intellectual perspective on psychedelic drugs and undeniably researched, really well documented perspective. That's so important. experiences with um with maps i remember thinking like thank god there's someone like this out there some someone like doblin out there rick doblin who has taken the super intelligent approach to recognizing what these substances are and what are the positive benefits are and how can you get these things slowly but surely through the legal system and that's what they're doing now with mdma that's what they're doing now with the studies that they're doing on Soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder and all sorts of other people to police officers anybody great victims. Yeah violence victims

I think that's it's so important. It's just it's these are Really beneficial things that we're being denied and we're being denied by people who haven't experienced them, which is the most ironic aspect of it. It's like something having penicillin, but they won't let you try it. Because they don't use it themselves. And we know that such things as ibogaine exist. There is a way to interrupt opioid addiction and the addiction process. This is a potential cure for the many millions of people who are currently opiate addicted. Ibogaine therapy has been working out miraculous results for people. It helps them turn around their lives and to stop needing the junk. In two to three days? Yeah. One treatment. It's literally

miraculous. We know it exists. The Department of Defense ought to be using it for our poor vets that have returned from an unrighteous battle. The whole cause of their suicidal behavior, I believe, is because they were told to go into an unrighteous battle. It was a war waged on lies and only to create, basically to kick a hornet's nest, you know, to keep endless war going. It's working pretty good. To keep an endless war going. It's working pretty good. Well, post-traumatic stress disorder, what's really fascinating about it is that there's this reaction to stress, to intense stress, traumatic situations. And that your body has almost this intense anticipation of a constant battle, of stress and that that can be interrupted and that this is there's really no other method i mean you can go to therapy all

your life and slowly perhaps slowly erode the memories of this and give yourself some psychological tools to manage these experiences but as far as like something that can sort of stop it in its tracks there's never been anything that's demonstrated that has the power of psychedelics. The post-traumatic stress disorder studies are showing that 85% of vets that have it and are otherwise untreatable are having success after one treatment. And MAPS got a grant to do a second and third trial. That means the people, the 15% who didn't really feel relief from post-traumatic stress disorder get a second turn and a third turn. So it's amazing. It's amazing.

It's amazing. It's not just the substance, but it's the psychological therapy relationship. Well, it's also the reset. The reset. The control, alt, delete for the mind, the resetting of the consciousness that I think so many of us operate on momentum. We operate on the momentum of our past and that's all we know.

And it's sort of the, we're connected to that momentum like a safety blanket. Like we believe that this momentum equals the future. And it's very difficult to get out of those grooves that are so deeply carved in our consciousness. That's right. And almost nothing does it. But MDMA will allow you to get that distance. And in order for you to transform out of a phase, you know, the psychologists basically say that you have to be able to look at your subjective state from another objective observation on that subjective state. And so that's literally what's happening with the MDMA. You're distanced from it.

You can look at your behavior or what happened to you with more dispassion. You can have compassion on yourself and start to forgive everyone involved. And it's miraculous and life-changing, and it's miraculous and life-changing, which then leads to new neural growth. In both psilocybin and MDMA, they've been charting that there is new neural pathways. Not only does it just feel that way,

but it literally is that way. It is changing your mind. It's changing your brain and your mind. All's changing your brain. Wow. And your mind. All right, folks. The Kickstarter. Tell people, Jamie, put that stuff up on the screen. Show people how to get to it. And if you could give out the URL.

Buildentheon.com. Buildentheon.com. E-N-T-H-E-O-N.com. Buildentheon.com. 923 backers. Look at this, folks. $122,626,000 is already pledged. Bam.

Yeah, it's coming. Great rewards. Wonderful art. Great rewards. And we will put this up on Twitter today, and we'll put it up on Facebook today, and we'll let everybody know what's up. Thank you, Joe. Thank you so much. You're awesome. You guys are awesome, too.

Appreciate you very much. All right, ladies and gentlemen, we'll be back tomorrow with Alison Rosen. Take care. See you soon. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.

Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.