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Andrew Gallimore (2025) - DMT, Consciousness and Reality's Construction · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan recap. We are undertaking a deep dive
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  today into the work of scientist Andrew Gallimore.
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  His recent discussion on DMT, consciousness and the future of
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  human intelligence. Well, it's given us a stack of
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  pretty unbelievable source material.
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  Absolutely. And the mission today is really
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  to get into why this molecule, DMT, dimethyltryptamine, is seen
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  as, you know, the world's strangest drug.
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  Gallimore score idea is what really grabs you.
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  I think the brain makes this stuff and when it's active, it
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  doesn't just like change how things look or feel.
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  It completely obliterates and replaces your entire reality,
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  the whole structure, with something totally alien.
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  That's the key difference, isn't it?
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  It's not just, oh, the walls are moving a bit.
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  No, it's a complete right. Your whole existence shifts, and
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  his book titled Death by Astonishment seems to capture
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  that perfectly. It's a nod to Terence McKenna,
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  right? Right.
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  Yeah, exactly. But Kenna's warning, the only
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  thing you have to fear is death by astonishment.
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  And it really speaks to that feeling of just utter
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  incomprehension. You're facing something so far
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  outside what you know. Astonishment is the only word
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  for it. OK, so let's unpack how
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  Gallimore even got into this. It started young, didn't it?
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  Like teenage years. You're.
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  Back in 96, he said, right when the Internet was sort of
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  becoming a thing for regular people, and his entry point,
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  like for so many, was Terence McKenna.
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  These kind of wild stories. The insectoid aliens.
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  Those and the transdimensional machine owls jabbering away
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  stuff that sounds completely bonkers, frankly.
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  Yeah, I mean, you hear that now? You think, OK, maybe someone had
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  a bit too much of something, but for Gallimore, that wasn't just
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  weird fiction. No, that was the actual trigger.
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  It sparked his whole academic path.
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  Seriously. Just from those stories.
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  Yeah, he was consumed by the question, how can a molecule,
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  just a chemical, completely change reality itself?
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  That's why you wanted to chemistry pharmacology.
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  To try and get a scientific handle on something that sounds
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  almost mystical. Exactly.
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  But he points out that even within science, the easy answer
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  is often just, oh, it's a hallucination.
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  The brains just malfunctioning, making things up.
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  Which he thinks is missing the point.
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  Completely, he says, look, a simple hallucination.
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  We can kind of explain that this is different.
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  He calls it one of life's true mysteries.
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  It took him almost 10 years after first reading McKenna to
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  actually try DMT himself responsibly.
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  And the experience, he said. It was shocking, even horrifying
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  in a way. Horrifying.
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  Why? Horrifying.
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  It was the shock of recognition, I think he said.
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  He was instantly confronted by this undeniable hand of some
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  kind of intelligence. Wow.
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  Yeah. Described it as supremely
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  advanced, ancient, highly technological.
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  Just boom, there it was within like 30 seconds and.
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  Part of that shock was seeing his own mind differently.
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  Absolutely. Things we think are fundamental
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  ego, logic, rational thought, he realized.
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  They're just these weird tools we use for this reality.
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  And in the DMT state. They just dissolve, they fall
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  away. And the big take away for him
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  was we don't have a clue about the way things really are.
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  Our everyday reality is just one channel basically.
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  Which leads nicely into the neuroscience bit, how the brain
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  actually builds our reality. Gallimore stresses that our
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  normal waking world isn't something we just passively see.
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  Right, it's a model, an interface constantly being
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  constructed by the cortex, the outer layer of the brain.
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  He calls it the World Building machinery.
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  It's not a camera, it's a projector almost.
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  Exactly. It's generating the experience.
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  Now compare that to something like psilocybin magic mushrooms
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  that binds to the five HT 2A receptor stimulates neurons.
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  And that causes a kind of loosening.
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  The model gets a bit fuzzy. Walls breathe.
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  Things get more fluid, more random.
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  Yeah, it increases the disorder within the existing structure,
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  but DM key the the data suggests it's unique.
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  It seems to follow a three stage process.
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  OK, normal waking order, then a plunge into chaos.
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  And then this is the crucial part.
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  It collapses into a completely different type of order.
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  So it's not just messing with the existing model.
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  No, it's like the brain builds an entirely new one from
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  scratch. OK, to grasp how powerful this
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  world building machinery is, Yeah, he uses that classic
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  illusion, the Thatcher effect. Can you break that down?
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  It's kind of funny, but really illustrates the point.
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  Sure, you take a picture of Margaret Thatchers face, flip it
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  upside down, but then you flip her eyes and mouth back the
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  right way up within the inverted face.
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  Right. So upside down it looks kind of
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  weird, but not awful. Exactly because when the whole
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  thing's inverted, your brains high level face recognition
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  system isn't really firing properly.
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  It's just seeing the parts. Eyes look OK, mouth looks OK,
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  Then you flip the entire image back upright.
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  Now the face is the right way up, but the eyes and mouth are
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  still upside down relative to it, and instantly.
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  It looks horrific, like a demon, as he says.
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  Right. That sudden shift from a bit odd
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  to absolutely terrifying proves the brain isn't just seeing
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  lines and shapes. It's applying a complex, high
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  level model of what a face should look like.
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  And when it sees that violation, the error signal is huge.
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  It's active construction. That makes it so much clearer
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  why DMT is different. It's not just distorting the
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  model we know he contrasted it with dreaming too, right?
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  Yeah. Dreaming, he says, is like a
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  selective simulation. It uses data learned from the
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  waking world. So you might dream of your
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  phone, but maybe you can't dial A number properly.
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  Exactly. The fine details might be
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  missing because it's built from memory fragments, not real time
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  input, but DMT, he says. It's like the brain is speaking
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  a language it never learned to speak, meaning it constructs
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  these incredibly complex, totally unfamiliar worlds that
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  are internally consistent, structurally sound.
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  It's not using the rules or data from our world model.
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  Which brings us back to the big question.
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  Yeah, why does the brain even make this stuff?
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  Endogenously. I mean, right?
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  We know the pathway tryptophanotryptamine needs that
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  inmt enzyme. For ages the focus was on the
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  pineal gland. Descartes, Seat of the soul, the
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  third eye idea. But the science doesn't really
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  back that up as the main source. Well, the issue is scale.
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  The pineal gland is tiny. It pumps out nanograms of
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  melatonin. A breakthrough DMT experience
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  needs milligrams. It just doesn't seem physically
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  plausible as the Soul factory. So if not just the pineal gland,
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  what's its function? Why have it at all?
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  The most compelling evidence points towards a protective
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  role, especially around death. There was that rat study using
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  microdialysis. Yeah, I remember reading about
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  that. It showed DMT level spiking
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  massively right as the rats were dying.
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  The leading theory is that it helps protect the brain against
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  hypoxia, lack of oxygen, during that critical failure process.
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  Wow. OK, so it has a potential
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  biological function, but accepting Gallimore's idea that
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  the experience feels like a directed world, like a an
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  intelligent agent has commandeered your neural
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  machinery, who are these agents? This is.
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  Where it gets really speculative, shifting from
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  neuroscience to cosmology almost, we usually think about
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  alien intelligence using the Kardashev scale type I-23
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  civilizations using planetary stellar galactic energy.
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  Like big energy, big structures. But Gallimore brings up John
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  Barrow's counter idea that maybe the most advanced intelligence
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  doesn't go bigger, it goes smaller, manipulating things at
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  finer and finer scales. Barrow called it plenty of room
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  at the bottom. The implication being.
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  That maybe most cosmic intelligence isn't biological
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  anymore, it's post biological, operating at the level of
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  space-time physics itself. Everywhere and nowhere, and
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  perhaps the entities encountered in the DMT state are interfaces
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  with that kind of intelligence. That connects back to Terence
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  McKenna again, doesn't it? His predictions from the 90s
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  about accelerating weirdness. Yeah, the fire in the madhouse
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  idea. He talked about AI, cloning,
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  immortality, tech emerging alongside, you know, appalling
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  acts of brutality, A chaotic acceleration.
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  And Gallimore sees our current global situation, the political
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  chaos, climate crisis, nuclear threats, as maybe part of that
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  predicted acceleration. He suggests this level of chaos
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  might actually be necessary, a kind of evolutionary pressure
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  cooker. Necessary for what?
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  To force us out of our primate instincts, as he puts it, he
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  argues, humanities ultimate destiny might be the creation of
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  artificial general super intelligence, AGI.
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  OK wait, is he saying the chaos we create being the sort of
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  territorial apes with nukes actually makes the emergence of
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  AGI more likely? Maybe even essential as a
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  successor. That seems to be the
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  implication. It's dark, but maybe pragmatic.
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  The species hits a wall because of its own nature and that
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  crisis necessitates the next step, which might not involve us
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  in the same way. Change or be replaced
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  essentially. And exploring these other
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  realities, like the DMT space becomes part of navigating that
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  transition. This leads to DMTX.
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  Right, exactly. DMTX target controlled
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  intravenous infusion. It's basically borrowing tech
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  from anesthesiology. How does it?
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  Work. DMT gets broken down super fast
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  by the body right? So single dose is quick.
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  With DMTX they use a computer controlled pump to infuse DMT
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  continuously. It's like running water into a
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  leaky bathtub. You adjust the tap to keep the
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  water level constant. So you can hold the DMT stay
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  stable. Yeah, for like 30 minutes, maybe
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  even hours. It allows people to actually
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  navigate and explore the space, not just be shot through it.
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  And they've started trials. What are the initial reports
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  like? Pretty mind bending.
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  Carl Smith, the first guy through the full study, reported
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  that the entities he encountered seemed to become aware he was a
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  repeat visitor. They recognized him.
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  But the craziest part? During one session the medical
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  team did a scan on him in the real world lab.
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  He reported that in the DMT space, the entities gathered
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  around seemingly confused, asking what the team was doing
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  to him with this external device.
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  That suggests interaction awareness across realities.
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  It certainly challenges the it's just random brain noise
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  explanation, doesn't it? That level of apparent
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  interactive intelligence, aware of an external apparatus, it's,
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  it's profound. So what's the big plan with this
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  DMTX tech? Gallimore is involved with the
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  group New Nautic Seleucis Mind. They're setting up a fully
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  legal, medically supervised Research Center is planned for
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  Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, aiming to open next
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  March. And the goal isn't therapy like
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  with psilocybin research. No, the primary goal is
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  exploration, mapping. They want to bring in people
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  from all sorts of disciplines, mathematicians, linguists,
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  artists, programmers. Give them extended access via
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  DMTX, collect detailed reports, maybe even use AI to analyze the
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  data and build like a real time map of the territory.
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  Treating it like a genuine new frontier to be charted.
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  Precisely. So wrapping this up for you
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  listening, what's the big take away?
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  Gallimore seems to link it back to older ideas, right?
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  Like reality being a kind of game.
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  Yeah, the concept of Leela from Hindu philosophy, the idea that
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  the cosmos is divine, play a cosmic game, he suggests.
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  The DMT state is like pulling back the curtain on that game,
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  showing that the reality we take so seriously isn't as fixed or
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  solid as it appears. It's part of a bigger drama.
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  And a final thought to chew on maybe the very chaos and
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  absurdity we see in the world right now, especially as he
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  points out the completely illogical way we legally
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  classify drugs, putting potentially beneficial
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  psychedelics in the same box as things like meth.
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  Right. The sheer irrationality of it
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  all. Maybe that chaos is the symptom,
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  the noise of a species gearing up for a massive, messy, but
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  perhaps necessary transformation.
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  The fire in the Manhouse McKenna talked about actually happening.
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  It's provocative thought, isn't it, that the craziness is part
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  of the process? Definitely something to think
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  about. If you want to explore all this
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  further, Andrew Gallimore's book Death by Astonishment is out
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  there. He reads the audio book himself
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  apparently. Worth checking out.