Health Longevity Secrets

DMT: Death By Astonishment with Andrew Gallimore

• Robert Lufkin MD • Episode 231

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Imagine your brain as a world-building engine that never shows you the thing-in-itself, only a model tuned for survival. Now imagine a molecule that doesn’t just bend that model but switches it to a fully formed, hyper-detailed reality populated by entities that seem to think, act, and sometimes deny you entry. That’s the claim at the heart of our conversation with computational neurobiologist and DMT researcher Andrew Gallimore, author of Death by Astonishment.

We start by laying the groundwork: predictive brains, interface theory, and why ordinary dreams and hallucinations reuse what the brain already knows. From there we compare classic psychedelics—LSD, psilocybin, mescaline—with DMT. The former loosen constraints; the latter appears to replace the entire world model. Reports converge on crystalline clarity, higher-dimensional geometry, and interactive beings that feel autonomous. Andrew introduces the “lockout” effect, where access can be refused, and argues that orthodox neuroscience struggles to explain structured, agent-like phenomena arising so quickly and coherently.

The breakthrough comes with extended-state DMT using target-controlled infusion—a medical technique borrowed from anesthesia—to hold explorers in the space for 30 to 90 minutes or longer. Early pilots suggest the state stabilizes, enabling intentional interaction and systematic observation. We explore a research roadmap: send in mathematicians to probe topology, linguists to parse symbolism, anthropologists to map social rules, artists to render lawful structure. Instead of asking entities to prove themselves, we let experts recognize operations that exceed typical human cognition, like effortless four-color theorem tilings or impossible geometric transforms performed in real time.

We also talk safety, differences between DMT, ayahuasca, and 5-MeO, and emerging retreat-and-research models that combine medical oversight with rigorous protocols. Whether DMT reveals autonomous minds, emergent intelligence, or a yet-unknown information source, extended-state studies could convert private revelation into public evidence. Subscribe, share with a curious friend, and leave a review with the question you’d ask if you had an hour in the DMT space. What test would convince you that contact is real?

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Bluesky: ...

SPEAKER_00:

There we go.

SPEAKER_01:

Hey Andrew, welcome to the program.

SPEAKER_00:

Good to be here, Rob. Good morning.

SPEAKER_01:

All the way from Tokyo, Japan, uh on a somewhat unstable connection. So if we drop in and out, we'll just we'll just go with it. And we may edit some, but you know, uh we'll we'll we'll do the best we can we can. I'm so excited about this episode. You're your your your background, you're a computational neurobiologist, a chemical pharmacologist, and one of the leading experts on the psychedelic drug DMT. And you're also the author of the new book, Death by Astonishment, so uh which talks about this this amazing drug. So um let's let's jump dive right in. Um the um you let's start with uh back up and we're gonna start with with basics, kind of you you've said in your book, and you know that that DMT is not just another psychedelic, it's unique, you know, it's unlike LSD or psilocybin and how it affects our consciousness and and really literally our perception of reality. So before we define and dive into DMT, let's let's take just take a moment and look at what we mean by perceiving reality because it is so central to the DMT actions we're gonna be talking about. So, how how is how what is reality and how do we perceive it?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, that's a very big question. I mean uh you know, what is answer that question? What I can say um is that you know, the world that we perceive, um, the subjective world, you know, whenever we're awake, or even when we're asleep, if we're dreaming, but when whenever we're conscious, I think we can say um a world appears to us. We are immersed within a world, and we know that this world is you know, the the structure, the content, the dynamics, the information, all of that is represented uh within uh the cortex, within the brain. So the brain is kind of, I describe the brain as a world builder, it builds this model of reality, if you like. You know, that's the only reality we ever have access to, is this model being constructed by the brain um normally uh as a as a model of the environment. It's the brain's kind of best guess, if you like, about what it thinks is going on. It's kind of the interface by which we interact with the environment. We never have access to um the outside world in itself, you know, what Immanuel Kant would call you know the numenon. Well, we never have access to that, we only have access to the phenomenon.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, so that um that applies always. Yeah, so that that's really at odds with what most generally people, most general people think of the world is uh what they see is real, but really what you're saying is what we experience is just the model that our brain builds from our perceptions and and from other things, correct?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, so this is so that's kind of that's your my kind of the the axiomatic position that I always work from is that um all experiences in some way are built from the same stuff, right? Whether it's a normal waking experience, which we normally think of as the real world, so to speak, but it's built from the same stuff as as the dream world, it's built from the same stuff as hallucination. Hallucinations are also built from so it it into a very kind of tricky position, is like, you know, what's the difference between a hallucination? They're built from the same stuff. Everything's built from uh these patterns of neural activity.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it sounds like uh similar to um a friend of the program uh who's a who's a neuropsychologist and a philosopher near us here is Donald Hoffman. He's written a lot about the dashboard theory of reality and how we you know the we synthesize what we see through our through our perceptions. And it seems like that's a very sort of a similar model, correct?

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. I mean, I've been a fan of Donald's work for for a long time. And so, yes, he informs and you know, and many others, of course. You know, I stand on the shoulders of giants, so to speak. But yes, Hoffman's interface theory, as he calls it, that's exactly what he's talking about. You don't see the world as it is, you see the interface that allows you to interact with the environment.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, yeah. It's it's such a such a fascinating idea that that the the world, the reality we experience is a combination of our perceptions that we perceive, but then also things from our brain, our past experiences, our expectations, our what we expect, and then and then other factors like we're gonna we're gonna talk about in a minute. So so if if our brains are basically reality generating machines, so does that mean we're already living in uh kind of a simulation?

SPEAKER_00:

Um simulation, maybe. I mean, simulation's one word for it, yeah. Uh I I think I prefer the more neutral term model because simulation gets you into, well, you get into simulation theory and the idea that we're being run on a computer, which is an entirely different question. So right, right.

SPEAKER_01:

So the simulation, to be clear, uh the simulation is not run by a you know, Elon Musk question type, you know, uh the everything reality is a computer game, and that's one kind of simulation. But this is literally a simulation that our brain is constructing a reality that we experience based on our perceptions. And that reality will vary literally from person to person. And then, you know, as Don Hoffman talks about, it it varies dramatically from species to species. And you know, a bat perceives a world very different than we do. They, you know, see different frequencies of light and infrared, and dogs, you know, smell things and all, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

So um it we're gonna talk about um DMT and how it how it affects this this reality, this reality signal. So and and you know, switching the reality channel. So if if reality is a channel, before we get into the DMT, I'm wondering just one more basic question, then who or what is broadcasting the signal?

SPEAKER_00:

Right. Well, in the case of normal waking reality, the brain, the brain has this model that it's kind of, as I said, it's like the brain's best guess. It's the brain's it's the brain, it's the interface uh by which the bread uh the brain or we can interact with the environment. But all the time your brain is receiving information from the environment, that it uses to kind of test and keep this model tuned to the environment. It kind of makes predictions using its model uh and then tests them against sensory inputs, uh, which gives the brain a good idea whether the model is kind of faithfully or um accurately modeling what's actually going on in the environment, basically, by constantly sampling sensory. We're talking about visual, the visual world, which you know, DMT in particular is a very visual drug, so that makes sense. Um, but that's you know, that's all the information that the brain receives is this um constant stream of uh of sensory inputs through the eyes that it it um that it uses to test its model. Uh now with DMT, of course, something quite different seems to be going on, which we might want to get into.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, yeah, let's get into that. So far we've we've agreed that that you know modern science pretty much agrees, this is this is accepted that that the reality we experience is created by our brain. You know, all animals do this, and it's a function of the the inputs we get plus other things in the brain that happen and other act parts. So now DMT. So let's talk about DMT. Let's let's start with maybe maybe DMT 101, because we haven't we haven't really talked about it on this podcast much. So you you you said that DMT is not just another psychedelic, it's it's unique. It's so so what is DMT and why is it so radically different from other kind of well-known psychedelics like psilocybin or lsd and how it interacts with consciousness?

SPEAKER_00:

Broadly, DMT is very clearly related to psilocybin. Um it's you know, there's only there's one origin different on the molecule. Uh DMT is quite different. Now DMT, psilocybin, LSD, mescaline, they all fall into this category uh of molecules known as generally the the classic psychedelics. These are the psychedelics that most people are kind of uh familiar with. I mean, there are hundreds now of psychedelics, both natural and entirely synthetic, uh, but they all do broadly the same kind of thing. They all alter this world model in either uh uh a subtle or very dramatic way. So the as I said, the world that you experience is always this model constantly emerging from brain activity, it's constantly being constructed by the brain. And what psychedelics do is they go into the brain and they they perturb that model, they they bind to specific serotonin receptors in the brain, uh which effectively stimulates neural activity. It it causes these neurons in the brain to become more excitable, uh to fire more readily and to share information much more freely between themselves. And so this world model that your brain is constructing, this model that's normally stable, it's predictable, it's kind of it's kind of working perfectly well, and then this psychedelic comes in, it stimulates these neurons, the world more dynamic, uh, becomes much um uh changed compared to the psychedelic effect. When people take psychedelics, they they say, oh, you know, the world becomes the world they experience becomes more fluid and dynamic, and they become much more sensitive to sensory inputs. Um, this is the effect uh of a psychedelic. And this is relatively easy. You know, we know now, kind of we've got neuroimaging data that shows these effects on neural activity. We know what's happening at the molecular level, you know, the level of receptors and neurons, and so we have a pretty good picture actually of why if you take LSD or psilocybin, the world seems to shift quite dramatically becomes this is very fluid and only experience. Um so Robin Carhartt Harris, um um the world's leading psychedelic researcher at the moment, uh, describes this as a kind of brain activity becomes slightly random, sh and so it becomes much more loosened up. Um, and that fits with people's subjective experience. Um but with DMT, something slightly different seems to happen, something more dramatic. The world isn't just kind of altered or changed, or it doesn't just become more fluid or random or anything like that. You actually find that the world model switches completely to an entirely different world model, uh, a world model that has no relationship whatsoever to the normal waking world. Uh, but it's not some brain kind of being thrust into completely random activity. Um, this world that you experience under the influence of DMT is a an entirely alien reality. It's I mean, literally that's what it is. It's a world that is filled, uh, it's highly complex, you know, inordinately complex, higher-dimensional, alternate reality, often hyper-technological, um, as if you've entered an alien civilization from a billion years in the future, and it's filled with beings, incredibly strange beings, non-human, non-animal beings that are that appear to be like alien life forms from another dimension, um, that are apparently far, far, far more intelligent than humans, and that interact with you and kind of welcome you into the space uh and say, look, you know, look, look where you are, you know, look what we can show you, and they will show you bizarre, higher dimensional objects and toys and uh and and perform operations on you and you know, neurosurgery or psychosurgery or something like this, you know. The whole thing is just it's it's baffling and it's confounding because it shouldn't happen, you know. It doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, that's that's what I love about your book. I can't recommend it enough. Uh uh for for anyone who's interested in this area and want to more want more. And that's that's one of the unique perspectives you bring to this uh way of looking at this drug. There's no question everybody ever there's general acceptance that DMT is somehow different from the other psychedelics. You know, no, everybody, everybody acknowledges that. But you you argue and make an interesting point that the DMT isn't just a psychedelic, it's it's a doorway. And so, what's the most like like shocking evidence you found that suggests that we're not just hallucinating, but perhaps actually you know accessing another dimension of reality?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, I mean the world that we experience normally, the normal-waking world, this model the brain constructs is is one that it's evolved to construct, right? The brain evolved. Um, you know, from the moment you emerge from the womb, your brain world, uh model of the environment. You know, any world, it's the only language in a way that your brain knows how to speak is the language of of this reality, the normal waking world, reality reality. Uh, and so it's it's confounding. You know, why is it possible that when you stimulate the brain with this simple molecule, it suddenly becomes capable of constructing worlds that have that have no relationship, that are far more complex than the normal waking world, and yet perfectly errant and full of these beings. You know, you're not seeing dogs and cats and and cows and horses, you are these kind of animals the brain is used to uh modeling. You're seeing beings that are completely alien uh and yet exquisitely um constructed uh to me is is is is kind of a uh a mystery about how is the brain capable of doing this unless it's receiving information um from somewhere else or some other kind of intelligent agent. And that's broadly what I've what kind of I land on you know after thinking and researching this for a couple of decades. My current position is that DMT is allowing you not necessarily, I don't think you you go somewhere with when you take DMT, but it is like switching the channel, it's like your brain is given access to or uh given access to some alternate source of information that's flowing into the brain, and that seems to be under the control of some kind of intelligence. Because what's remarkable about DMT, and something I describe in the book, uh, is an effect called lockout, uh, which is when somebody will suddenly, you know, someone who uses DMT fairly regularly, uh, and then one day, just completely out of the blue, uh, they will smoke DMT in exactly the as they normally do, you know, vaporize DMT, I should say, uh, just as they normally do, but instead of being, you know, thrust into this alternate um reality, they they they instead they get a wagging finger from some entity that says, no, no, no, not today, uh, and they're blasted, or they that a huge X will kind of fill their fill fill their um field of view with a with a horrible sound, you know, no end, you know, kind of no entry, literally, and then they're pushed back into this normal waking world. So it's like these beings not only are they able to kind of show you things and and and basically I say kind of direct the brain to construct models of reality that it shouldn't know how to construct, but they can actually control whether or not you see anything. It's like they have they have control of the transmitter, if you like. They're the ones directing the information into the brain uh under the influence of DMT. And if they decide that they don't want to show you anything, um, then that's the way it is.

SPEAKER_01:

Um so you yeah, you talk about DMT being more than just a drug with these with these fascinating effects. So why are they so difficult to explain from an orthodox, you know, neuroscientific perspective? I mean, we we have we have models for radio waves and TV and electromagnetic effects, and you and you you you know, you're right that orthodox neuroscience can't really explain DMT. So, what are the biggest blind spots in in current brain science that you know and what needs to change for them to question these and understand these?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, um, I think you know, we we know a lot about not just normal, you know, the way the brain constructs our normal waking world model, but we also know a lot a lot about the way the brain can is able to construct models in the absence of sensory information, for example. So when you dream uh at night, your brain is constructing a world model. It's in fact it's doing so in basically the same way as it does uh when you're awake. Um, and this is because this is the the model your brain has learned to construct. So when people dream, uh and this has been studied for more than a century now, uh, people dream about dreams are effectively continuous with the normal waking world. Uh the brain is using uh what it learned about constructing a world in the waking state to construct a world in the dream state when it doesn't have access to sensory inputs. And from the phenomenology of dreams, we know that people they dream of what they uh you know, the proportion of time they spend on the telephone or watching TV in a dream state. Actually, when you measure it, is actually very similar uh to what happens in the waking state. People dream of dogs, they dream of cats, um, they dream of horses, they dream of people, right? This is the most common type of thing for you know, character in a dream is people, you know, people you know, people you've met a long time ago, these kind of things. So this all makes sense, right? These are the kind of models that your brain has learned to construct. What people don't generally dream about is higher-dimensional worlds filled with incredibly alien beings. The reason being, well, your brain doesn't really know how to construct these models. Um, these are completely alien models. They have there's not something the brain has evolved to construct or learned to construct. Um, when people hallucinate, even with um you know cases of schizophrenia and other neuropsychological conditions where people suffer from visual hallucinations, the vast majority of these hallucinations are normal-sized and normal appearing people and animals. Um, because again, you know, hallucination is simply the brain constructing a model that's kind of it's not properly mapped to sensory inputs from the environment. That's all hallucination is. It's a it's a non-adaptive perception. So all of this makes sense. Um, this is just the brain doing what it's learned to do, which is construct models of the environment, whether it has access to sensory inputs or not. So the question then is why, when you perturb the brain with DMT, does the brain become capable? It's like I always say it's it's like the brain is speaking a language it never learned to speak. It's constructing models that are far more complex, exquisitely complex, in a staggeringly dynamic narrative complexity of beings and and and scenarios that not only don't occur in normal waking life, or don't occur in the normal waking world, but could not. These things are impossible. People are describing seeing objects with more than three dimensions. Um they are describing levels of complexity and detail that simply don't exist in the normal waking world. Um, and so that's really the big question here is is why is why is this possible? Why why is the brain a this is not easy to explain from a neuroscientific perspective? Why is the brain able to render these worlds, to render these and construct with such crisp efficiency? These aren't suggestions of alternate worlds, these are absolute crystalline clarity, uh, more real than real. Um, and yet they have no relationship to the world that the brain learned to construct. So, in my opinion, that is um that is not easy to explain. It's not easy to simply pass them off and say, oh, this is just your brain, it's your brain on drugs, this is just your brain making it up. Because, in my opinion, the brain doesn't really or shouldn't have the ability to construct these uh uh worlds that have no relationship to the world it learned to construct.

SPEAKER_01:

And just a clarification, too, when we say uh a DMT experience, uh you're working with fairly purified DMT. Is it is it safe to say it's a similar experience with ayahuasca and five MeO DMT and other compounds like that that contain DMT?

SPEAKER_00:

Right, so ayahuasca, yeah. So ayahuasca is a as you as you well know, it's an indigenous drink that contains DMT, a DMT containing plant, plus a plant that contains a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, which allows the DMT DMT to be orally active. 5MOD DMT is actually a completely different molecule. Five methoxy dimethyltryptamine has is a very different kind of experience. But yes, broadly Okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Um one one interesting point you make is that the the the that um I mean anyone who's ever done DMT or ayahuasca would never mistake it for a dream, like you say. It's completely different, it's not a dreaming experience, it's not like just oh, I had a weird dream. It's it's completely unique, and that's the that's the fascinating thing about it. And you've said that that you know the DMT doesn't really scramble the brain, but another way to look at it is it's a precision key that unlocks a hidden operating system.

SPEAKER_00:

And is is that fair to say yeah, it's like I always say, you know, regul psychedelics, they they kind of they nudge the dial slightly out of tune. Uh they they push the brain into this slightly more fluid dynamic state, um, and that matches the experience. But with DMT, it's as if you've suddenly found a new channel, it's like you've turned the dial even further, uh, and then this entirely new channel has kind of crackled uh and burst into view. Um so that's kind of yeah, I think that and it's it's like finding a new channel on the TV set and then realizing that the aerial is disconnected. And that's like where did that where did that channel come from? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Well now let's let's let's shift a little bit. And we have these questions that that science can't answer, that orthodox neuroscience is struggling with, that you know just doesn't make sense. But you and Rick Straussman are now um uh developing a an experimental model for exploring this this DMT world in a in a scientific controlled unique fashion that hasn't been done before. Can you talk about that?

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, so well I I was working with Rick Strassman. I'm not currently working with him as such, but um back in 10 years ago now, 2015, um myself and Rick to take a step back a second. So so the problem with DMT, uh, well the problem for most people it it's it's a mercy, uh, but with DMT, the experience is very, very short. So it's a very short-acting drug. Whether you inject it or you vaporize it, it gets into the brain very, very quickly you kind of break through into this alternate reality, and you're there for three, four, five minutes, uh, and then you're kind of brought back. So it it's it enters the brain and it's broken down and removed from the brain very, very, very quickly, which makes the experience like a roller coaster, uh, which is great. You know, it's enough, that's more than enough for most people. Um, but if you want to really study the space, if you really want to analyze and spend time within the space, if you're really interested in what these intelligent beings are and you want to establish two-way communication with them, um, then you need to be able to spend more time stably within the space. Uh, and that's not possible just with vaporizing or with an injection. Uh, and so with Rick Strassmann, we developed this model basically, which allows us to basically bring somebody into the DMT state and hold them there to stabilize brain DMT levels. So rather than the brain DMT levels kind of rising and then kind of dropping off very quickly, we can try the idea is to stabilize the brain DMT level. And we use a technique from anesthesiology called target control venous infusion, uh, which is what they use in surgery. So, in surgery, when they kind of put you to sleep, so to speak, uh they inject, they have an infusion machine which delivers a programmed uh rate of drug into the bloodstream. Uh, the idea being to maintain the anesthetic drug at a fairly stable concentration in your brain so that you can, you know, they can keep you under, you know, in in the unconscious state for as long or as short as they they need. So they use a very short-acting anesthetic drug. And so it occurred to me, you know, 10 years ago that why can't we repurpose that technology? But rather than using an anesthetic drug, we put DMT uh into that uh machine. And so we we myself and Rick, we worked on, we developed this pharmacokinetic model to a model of the drug's metabolism and distribution uh uh of DMT in humans using his data from his pioneering study in the 1990s. He had blood concentration data, uh, and we are able to show in a paper that we published in 2016, uh, kind of a proof of principle that this technique should work. You know, DMT has the prerequisite pharmacological properties, um, such that you should be able to use target-controlled intravenous infusion uh and induce someone into the DMT state using this infusion machine and hold them there for 30 minutes, an hour or Maybe you know several hours. Um, and that kind of took off. It's become known as DMTX now. Uh, we're actually able to implement this in humans. They were the first kind of academic institution to implement this in humans and show um that it worked, that you could bring someone into the DMT state, you know, a deep DMT state, a full breakthrough DMT state, um, hold them there uh in their study for 30 minutes. But subsequent studies have have been able to extend this for 90 minutes. And a study, I think, out of Basel uh was able to hold someone in the state for like six hours. Um, so so yeah, it's it's it's it's kind of a dramatic way of being able to dramatically extend this very what's normally a very short roller coaster into a a much longer, more controlled trip.

SPEAKER_01:

What are some of the insights that are that people have figured out from this extended experience that isn't possible with the the shorter one? Any any breakthroughs yet, or how has it changed your uh our thinking of DMT?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, we're very much in the early stages. So the the Imperial College study was really a um uh a pilot. It was really just to show that this is safe and effective, right? People aren't going to die, they're not going to freak out. Uh it's it's tolerable and manageable and safe. Uh and they were able to demonstrate this, you know, at least for the 30 minutes. So um, so that's the key takeaway from the Imperial studies that this works and that people can deal with it. Uh, and we as we kind of hoped and predicted, you know, my my hope was that as you go into the DMT state, the brain is constructing this alternate world model. And it at first it's it's very uh overwhelming and disorientating, as you can imagine. Um, but over time, what they found is that the state stabilizes. And so people um with undergoing this DMTX technology were able to spend time interacting with um these beings within the space uh you know for much longer periods. So I can kind of see uh now I we have this project in a Caribbean, which we can talk about. Um that you know, this really opens up. It's like the difference between like um free diving and and deep sea diving, where you have this line from the boat right to the bottom of the ocean. You can explore around that not having to worry about your air supply. Um, it's that kind of thing. You know, you you once you're able to stabilize the state, then you can in, you know, you can send in mathematicians who can look at the the structure and the topology of the space. You can send in linguists who can who can study the language and the symbolism within the space, you know, um theologians, anthropologists, psychologists, artists. Um, you can imagine people with their own specific specialities going into the DMT space and being able to just spend an hour or two within the space and and and and and explore and and and and study these particular aspects of the space. So I think it's it's it's it's an exciting time to be studying DMT, I think.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow, that's that's that's that's fascinating. Very, very exciting. I I mean for for someone who's let's say someone who's never used DMT, and you you you explained it before a little bit, but how you know how do you even begin to describe the experience? Is it what's the closest metaphor for people? Is there anything else that you can add? You've already talked about it a little bit, but uh for for let's say someone who's never done ayahuasca or or or DMT, any any uh any other metaphor for that?

SPEAKER_00:

All I could say to someone who's never taken DMT is whatever you think it's going to be like, it isn't. Um you know, I first took DMT more over 20 years ago, and I'd read all of I read all the books, I listened to Terence McKenna's lectures describing it, and and kind of thought that I knew what I was going to experience, uh what I expected, and yet it was it was completely unlike that. You know, I was instantaneously confronted with uh what I can only describe as an immense and timeless alien intelligence that was undeniable, undeniable in its presence and its the immediacy of the experience. It was like right there, and it shocked me. Um, you're going to be shocked and horrified probably by this experience because it's it's unimaginable, it it exceeds your imagination um in every possible way. So I can describe it all day and I can discuss trip reports and what people kind of bring back and what they kind of render in in the English language, but it's an unenglishable experience. Um, it is so far beyond normal human experience that it simply completely transcends the the imagination, it transcends even the most, you know, the verbal skills of even the most eloquent speaker. It's it's something that is it's so utterly alien um that you cannot you cannot be prepared for it, in my opinion. It it is um but yes, you're going to be confronted with a highly uh an astonishingly complex, alternate world that um that you could never have anticipated or predicted. Um that and you're going to almost certainly, certainly most cases, you're going to be confronted with beings that are beyond the human, beyond the animal, and that are that appear to be not just more intelligent than humans, but but so intelligent and powerful that uh it that it's as if you're meeting an alien civilization that's a trillion years more advanced than us. That's and it might be that. I mean, I don't rule that out. That that might be what we're interacting with, is there's some kind of intelligence that has transcended the physical form, that is um that is no longer anchored to you know material, you know, wet brain and and and and and and physical bodies that has actually transcended the physical form in some way. Um I don't rule that out. I don't I don't say that that's what what we're dealing with here, but we we almost certainly, in my opinion, seem to be dealing with some kind of intelligent agent of some nature.

SPEAKER_01:

The title of your book is Death by Astonishment Confronting the Mystery of the World's Strangest Drug. I think that death by astonishment is a quote uh from Terence McKenna, I think. Or um Yeah. And and it and it speaks to the fact that although this is an incredibly powerful drug, it's also a very safe drug. Is that right? Uh as far as uh side effects or risks of, I mean, the the only deaths are by astonishment, right? Right. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So somebody asked famously, somebody asked Thomas McCann if DMT was dangerous, and he said the only risk is death by astonishment. And he was only being he was only being slightly hyperbolic because true astonishment, I think, is a very rare emotion. Um, it's become watered down now, and we we, you know, I was astonished by that. I was astonished by the movie, whatever, but true astonishment um is is very rare. But yes, you will, you know, DMT delivers astonishment on tap. You will be utterly, if you get a good hit of DMT, yes, it's physiologically safe. Uh, it's perfectly at home in the brain. The brain seems to be quite happy in the presence of DMT. The brain produces its own DMT, we know that now as well. Um, but the experience itself is going to be shocking. So if you if you know, if you suffer from, you know, uh if your heart isn't in a particularly good state, um, and you're prone to be careful with DMT because physiologically, yes, it's very safe, but there is of course a risk of being overwhelmed uh by the immensity of the experience.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, totally. Only use it under supervision, uh definitely under professional supervision. And um, so yeah, I mean, this you you've called this this stable interdimensional contact the most important potentially discovery in human history. So out of out of your experiments, what signs would you need to convince you that we've actually made contact? Or are you convinced already?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I'm you know, personally, I'm very much convinced. But what I what I try to do in my work is separate kind of private revelation, so my own personal conviction, and uh and kind of um rather than private revelation, to convert that into kind of more objective verifiable data. So it's one thing for me to say, oh, I'm so convinced, you know, just take this drug man, um, it's going to show you this alien intelligence. And it's quite another thing to be able to demonstrate that. Um, and so that's kind of what I'm interested in is actually, you know, what are, you know, how can we show? How can we show that this isn't just some extremely exotic hallucinatory phenomenon, uh, but that we are in fact dealing with some kind of intelligence. And I think the the the evidence is already points in that direction. You know, I was speaking about the the the how difficult it is to explain the DMT state, and also the the intelligence's uh apparent ability to control access to the space. So they seem to be able to actually manipulate and regulate this flow of information from uh wherever. Uh, but what we what we'd like to do is actually do some much more directed um experiments uh on the space and on the intelligences within the space. And people have suggested things like, you know, if we're dealing with some extremely advanced intelligence, perhaps we can give them mathematical problems to solve, right? So we can give them a large number and say, find the unique prime factors of this large number, something that the human brain can't do, kind of you can't do that in your head. It takes computers. Um, so if you could give one of these entities and say, here's this very large number, can you convert this into um uh can you show us the unique prime factors of this number? And that would be a kind of a test, right? Um, but again, I think the problem with this kind of approach, the idea of us, as lowly humans going into this space and kind of saying, Oh, you know, prove your existence to us, prove you know, prove your ontological status, please. Uh, it might seem kind of ridiculous. Um, so I'm not sure that's the best approach, uh, with this kind of arrogance that you know that we would deign to go into their realm and interact with these vast intelligences and kind of uh you know, expect them to kind of play our little ontology games. Um so I think one thing that's interesting about these intelligences is that they they can't help but betray their intelligence. So the things that they do, the what the kind of the way that they perform and the operations they perform are uh often seem to exceed things that the human brain can do. So, for example, um they will perform mathematical or geometric operations kind of spontaneously in terms of what they're constructing. Um, you know, the the way that they are manipulating their own space, right, um, seems to be beyond what a human could do. So a good example of this, um my friend Um Andres interested in the DMT space, and he was describing entities that were type that were painting walls within this space, um, but they were painting walls in a very specific way. Um, they were painting walls using what's called the four-color theorem, uh, which is um basically the way that you can any kind of map or any kind of tessellated map of shapes, you can always colour that map with four colours such that no two shapes abut each other with the same colour. All right. So if you want to do a map of the world, you can always colour that map of the world, each country a different colour with four colours, and no two countries with the same colour abut, right? And that can be um, but it's very difficult to do. If you know if I showed you this map and said, Can you colour this in with four colours? You would it would take a long time and it's very difficult to do to get it right. But these beings were kind of painting the walls with these incredibly complex maps uh of four colours and doing it perfectly as if they're saying, Look what we can do. Um and and and of course, most people when they see this, they would just say, Oh, that's incredible. Uh, but when you have a mathematician, you know, this is why I'm I was talking about getting specialists in there, because they can say, Oh, this this being was doing wasn't just strange or beautiful or incredible, it was actually impossible. They were doing things that uh aren't mathematically possible for uh for a human brain to do, they exceed the ability of the human brain brave. And I think that that E to kind of demonstrate dealing with some kind of intelligence is is when they do things and when you can when people can recognize them, specialists can recognize that these intelligences are doing things, creating the space, performing operations that the human brain on its own um can't do. So this is I think the way that we handle it. We don't ask the intelligences to kind of um to do things for us, to cooperate, but in fact, we simply send the right people in who can explain you know which uh features of the space seem to exceed something that the brain could do.

SPEAKER_01:

We're we're almost out of time here. I I wondered one thought in the future. Do you see do you see a future where DMT exploration becomes something like uh like uh as common as meditation retreats? Or is this something that only a small group of pioneers will will ever attempt and work with?

SPEAKER_00:

Well, I think it's gonna be both because um I think you know we have this um special license now with a uh a government in the Caribbean, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and we're actually opening a um, well, I'm working with a company that's opening a retreat center, also a research center on the island. It's called Eleusis. Uh people can actually go to illusismind.com and they can find out more about it and they can sign up. Um, so what we want to do is is is to democratize not just DMT. Uh, I mean you know, hundreds of thousands of people use DMT uh across the US alone already. Uh, but we want to democratize DMTX. So I do see a few actions, and again, you know, target control intravenous infusion is no joke when you're uh infusing a drug into someone's bloodstream over a long period of time, it needs to be done under prop proper medical supervision. Um that's actually doing the infusion, uh, nurses, uh, psychiatrists as well. Um, but I think yes, it's going to be democratized. I think um in the future I will see a time, hopefully, when people will spend long periods of time um kind of existing and exploring this this incredible alternate reality. I think it's it's kind of our birthright. You know, this this molecule DMT is scattered throughout the natural world. It's not some rare exotic molecule cooked up in the lab of some clandestine chemist. This is a molecule that is nature and it also appears to be uh well it is found kind of kinship if you like with this molecule. It's not some random psychedelic molecule, but it's a molecule that is intimately connected with all life. It's found in alien physiology. So I think that DMT is this kind of gift, it's this message, yeah, it's this key that allows us to enter intelligence intelligences that we uh we don't have access to. Indigenous peoples, of course, have been interacting with perhaps for thousands of years. And I'm just we're just go to a retreat center and uh and be hooked up to one of these infusion machines um and spend you know several hours maybe uh enjoying and uh interacting and learning from um these uh uh incredibly advanced uh intelligent beings. I mean it sounds very sci-fi, but that's the reality of it.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, I can't can't wait to hear what what you and your colleagues discover there. We'll we'll put the link to the show notes to that site and also your own uh your own website as well. And just uh thank you so much, Andrew, for sharing the time with us. And and uh I think the the the Wi-Fi held up exceptionally well. You know we're we're in good, in good shape. Yeah, yes, in the book is Death by Astonishment, Confronting the Mystery of the World, Strangest Drug, Andrew Gallimore. It's a wonderful book, forward by Graham Hancock, too, if you're a fan of him. And uh I I urge you all to get out of it there's so much more in the book. It's it's really worth it. Thanks again, Andrew, and hopefully we'll we'll talk again soon. I want to bring you back and uh get the update.

SPEAKER_00:

Pleasure. Thank you, Rob.