The Full Release: James Oroc Unplugged

Oroc: It was ultimately the greatest adventure of my life, which lead to the toad. And when I wrote Tryptamine Palace I didn't think it was publishable. I was working on a novel at the time, but I stopped working on it to write this book about an obscure psychedelic that no one seemed to know anything about. It seemed like a really bad idea at the time.

And then if it wasn't for Burning Man and the fact that I could give it away as part of the Burning Man art movement on the playa, it probably wouldn't have got written. So a lot of factors came together that actually gave me the space to write the book and then it got published. And in the seven years since its been published the psychedelic perspective in the West has shifted enormously. And interestingly 5-MeO has gone from being a relatively obscure compound to one of the hottest compounds in the entheogenic world at the moment.

At the time I wrote it Andrew Sewell, who was a good mate –he was one of the cluster headache researchers, he unfortunately died a couple of years ago–he gave a nice little blurb for the book saying "Tryptamine Palace will be the defining book on 5-MeO-DMT just like LSD: My Problem Child was for acid and DMT: The Spirit Molecule was for DMT. There's five or so new books on 5-MeO coming out this year the most interesting to me is the Ralph Metzner book The Toad & the Jaguar, and if that had of been released at the time I probably wouldn't have written Tryptamine Palace.

In Tryptamine Palace I talk about this idea I had that there was this elite group of West Coast psychonauts who had been keeping the compound secret–and that turned out to be true with Metzner and his friends. But I think the thing which keeps me around at this point is that people really resonate with Tryptamine Palace and the ideas therein; I had no idea if they were just my ideas, I didn't even know a lot of people that had smoked 5-MeO-DMT. But it would seem over the last decade that the model it presents to a lot of people is whats keeping it interesting.

And in that book I actually give a quantum model for the entheogenic experience, which I think can be explained via Bose-Einstein condensates and the quantum vacuum, the Zero Point field. It's a little too complicated to go into now but I think that's one of the things that separates Tryptamine Palace, that is does have a physical model in it that can explain the mystical-entheogenic experience. I keep waiting for that to get shot down but more and more research seems to be leaning towards my model. More and more people that were skeptical are coming on board. So I think its interesting to see where Tryptamine Palace will be in say ten or twenty years.

But most of the work I've done since its publication is trying to integrate Eckhart Tolle's ideas about the ego to a psychedelic perspective. Because for me the most useful thing for psychedelics and 5-MeO-DMT is that you can actually observe the role of the ego in a way that's very effective for understanding how it works and working with that. It's the type of things which takes years and years of meditation to achieve these breakthroughs. You can actually have the same realizations with psychedelics but we actually don't have a system set up around us to help us work with the experiences we have.

 They don't realize like with the zen term "the finger that points at the moon is not the moon itself". Or as Aldous Huxley said, "experience is not what happens to a man, its what a man does with what happens to him." So it's the thinking about the 5-MeO experiences and relating it to other systems and finding the clues and philosophies that is the most interesting thing about it. Most people get a little bit lost in the ride.

It's interesting to see the rise of ayahuasca that drink a few times and suddenly think they need to be giving it to people. Or a lot of people that smoke 5-MeO suddenly go through this proselyting stage–I went through it myself. Its understandable. But I think a lot of neo-shamans need to take a step back and examine their motivations as their own egos become wrapped up in the substance theyre working with.

The problem with strong psychedelics and entheogens is that they tear the ego down, and egos like a muscle–I think it rebuilds up stronger if you don't opbserve it and witness its actions and take a step back to go "oh, theres my ego at work again." That's why Eckhart Tolle's work is so useful to the psychedelic perspective. I really recommend his book The New Earth to anybody that's ever smoked 5-MeO-DMT. You'll find more answers there than in just about any other book and it doesn't say anything about psychedelics at all!

So for me that's the most interesting way to use psychedelics as a tool, in a classical sense, for examining the role of the ego and to contact the universal mind. And I really think psychedelics and the universal mind are trying to get back in touch with us in general as a society, to bring us back to a more holistic path that's in tune with the rest of the planet. Because the path were on is not looking good. And its really not changing. There's some illusion its changing but actually its speeding up. Were headed into a real crunch period and the re-entry of the psychedelic perspective into the Western perspective in the last century is definitely part of the puzzle of where were headed to as a species.

I find it very interesting that spiritual leaders like the Dalai Lama or Eckhart Tolle or even Pope Francis… the reason Im initiating this conversation is that the day of organized religion may be over, and that in our current place in history its up to the individual to re-establish their own link to the divine. I think that's also one of the keys of getting our society back on track. More and more people are getting in touch with the universal intelligence within themselves and I think that's the experience which blows so many people away with 5-MeO-DMT in a full release state. That's where they experience consciousness without identity. Or the idea of an egoless state. Which I think is the highest ideal of the entheogenic experience. Or its really just the classic mystical experience. And to me that's what 5-MeO is really about.

The use of toad venom as opposed to the synthethic [5-MeO] … its hard to know how much 5-MeO is in the toad venom–it definitely works but it's a little like Russian roulette. Personally I would like to see the synthetic 5-MeO available because I think it's a little safer to work with but toad has other characteristics because it has other things in it. It has a spirit of its own as you would say. Its very interesting to see the Mexican people and how they are taking to it, that's one of the places where its really taking off.

I mean I've done a lot of research and anthropologically I've never ever found any real solid evidence that toad was in use. I do agree with Wade Davis and Andrew Weil's theory that it was probably the toad that was venerated by the Tolmecs and the Maya and the Aztecs. I think there were ancient trade routes that brought toad venom down from the Sonoran desert to Mesoamerica and that it was their most venerated entheogen. But it's a very hard thing to prove there's a lot of circumstantial evidence but less hard physical evidence. As it is with many entheogens because the traces of things don't stick around that long. So whether it's a traditional sacrament or something that was discovered by the hippies in the 70s I don't really know. But either way its here now.

Rak: What I was getting at is when you have a "full release" [on 5-MeO-DMT], you're there, you're oceanic, that's all great…

Oroc: And the drop returns to the ocean.

Rak: Yeah. And it's like, if there's energetic blocks or imprints theoretically it's cleansing all those blocks but when micro-dosing–oh it's not micro-dosing, but it's like lower-level threshold dosing so you stay in the body–but you're still getting activated. It totally feels like 5-MeO, but it's what I call the "event horizon" bandwidth or the outer wrapper of the Source. You don't go fully into the "ocean".

Oroc: So you're not learning the lesson about the ego.

Rak: No, you're not.

Oroc: Which is the most important lesson.

Rak: Yes it is. But there's a multiplicity of lessons and there's such data-rich information in that event horizon… So what I did get from [my 5-MeO-DMT freebase salt session with Martin Ball] though, to put it in context, is that I realized an activation of 5-MeO energy in me and there was a heart opening and he's staring at me and I was looking at him and there was this energy.

It was like he was a curandero and I was going to an ayahuasca ceremony, but I couldn't let him in. But, what I did realize, he did do some energetic work. I could feel like he did his little thing and I could feel this energy like coming up here and I did have a blockage that I did not realize, I did sort of know is there, but I'd forgotten. But in the deep dive stuff, that blockage has never got healed. And he didn't fully get it out of me, but he helped me remember where it was, and then I had an incredibly emotional release where I remembered the love I had put on a shelf somewhere in my emotional body for my first girlfriend that I had a baby with. You know, it was like we turned into brother and sister love, but it was still fresh, and that came from the work that Martin did. So there is positive results that can be had from this sub-threshold dosage. But it's different as you say from the ego, learning the correct role of ego or releasing the ego and having like a Samadhi oceanic experience.

Oroc: Connecting with the universal mind, yeah.

Rak: It's different again.

Oroc: But that's what people are looking for when they go to Martin. And who knows if your experience just came out of that mechanism or he actually did something, or you could have found that out yourself by lying in a room by yourself. Because when I come back [from the 5-MeO experience], if I've got any blockages, I'm totally, I feel them in the body, and I work with that shit by myself a lot. Now, physical stuff too, like if I'm physically hurting, I can heal. I've done that before, especially in the Dominican, where I'm doing a lot of sport. And like I'll come to, I'm like, Oh shit, my elbows fucked up and I'll work on it for a while.

Rak: Low doses?

Oroc: No, when I'm coming out. I'll come and work out. Because that's one of the reasons I don't do it with people, is I really now like the zone when I come out and I can lie in it more in between, kind of like what Martin's trying to do, I think, on the way out. But if there's anybody else in the room, I get attached to their ego and I try and rebuild myself. It's all experiential. So you really can't have anybody else in the room or you get latched onto their story.

Rak: The Tea Faerie says that it's like your storylines get entwined because she realizes everything is a fiction. The whole world's a game we're in, right? But it's like I felt that in the group work when we've come back from that big dose–and it's not that my ego is building me but maybe there's a mirroring… but I start to become so aware of everyone's energies. And this is what happens to me on tryptamines, this like holographic smeared awareness of everyone everything at once all woven together.

Oroc: Well that's what the various psychedelics do; with 5-MeO has been the one that most blows bandwidth full open, I think.

Rak: Yeah, so I think, you know, the gold is obviously the full release and that reconnects and does the full healing. But then within the spectrum then, it's like threshold doses. You can play around with the bandwidth and the possibilities for consciousness and healing and other stuff.

Oroc: Once you've had the realization of how it's all working, I agree with that.

Rak: Yeah, but you need to go to the Source first.

Oroc: My problem is people are going to Martin looking for the full-release mystical experience and that's not what he's offering. Especially with the material he's working with. So call a spade a spade: if you want to say that you're doing neo-shamanism and healing with low-dose therapy tell people that's what they're getting.

Rak: That is a good description and you're right.

Leo: That's one of the the points that I agree with Octavio that he always points out: that thing that if you don't get the full release You don't know. You don't know the experience yet. It's all middle stages. It's like when I used to live in the...

Oroc: He probably got that from me. (laughs)

Leo: Probably!

Oroc: I've been saying that since day one, I'd be like, "This is what it's all about." You gotta get the spot.

Leo: He has realized that it's true.

Oroc: That's tricky with toad, because you can't measure how much 5-MeO is in it.

Leo: No, but he has realized it because he has seen so many times when they're faking it. You know, and when they're really there, and he tells me, we're done, we're done, we're done. That's over.

Oroc: Especially in groups no one will ever want to admit that they didn't get there. It's like the old LSD. When you're coming to the Temple of Awaking Divinity and you're being promised the Holy Grail and everybody else is saying that they got there, it's really hard to say you didn't.

Rak: And if the beginners who don't know the difference too, they might think they do.

Oroc: Well you've created a suggestive state. They went on a lot in the acid world. I mean, this is all just history repeating itself. And you're a historian. I'm a historian. It's interesting that the Kiwis and the Aussies are anchoring the whole psychedelic movement at the moment just about, you and me and Graham (St. John).I mean actually working in terms of writing books and trying to actually create histories and timelines of things. We're doing more than anybody but a few you know, Erik Davis and Jay Stevens and people like that.

Rak: Maybe because we've got one foot outside of the culture, so we can look at it objectively, like, you know.

Oroc: Did you know that Jay Stevens co-wrote Mickey Hart's book, The Jumping at the Edge of Madness, which is a great book, which I've always liked, and then I've recently was told that he co -wrote it, but that makes perfect sense. It's kind of a style. Now he didn't write Acid Dreams, he wrote Storming Heaven, which is way better I think.

Rak: Yeah, actually they both had really good points, so the Acid Dreams was great for the MK Ultra stuff and following that thread.

Oroc: Have you read it recently though?

Rak: I re-read it I dipped back in a couple of years ago.

Oroc: I read it again maybe three years ago. I re-read it, you know, suddenly I can find all these mistakes in it because now I know too much. I know that's wrong, or it doesn't make any sense, where Storming Heaven's tight.

Rak: Yeah, Storming Heaven's the first one I read actually.

Oroc: It was interesting, I used to love Acid Dreams. And then I read Storming Heaven, which I thought was amazing. So I re-read Acid Dreams. It's something I found all these holes in it. Just because I know more.

Rak: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a secret history. You just walk in Mark McCloud's door and you get bombarded by the secret history of everything and all the acid goods and everything.

Oroc: I bought one of the Jesus acid prints you know he foils that Mark and those guys did the 25 reprints of the original Alex Grey acid blotter art. I love McCloud, man.

Rak: Yeah he's a cultural history legacy thing.

Oroc: I thought he was a total burnout the first time I met him. I was like fuck this is Mark McCloud he can't string two sentences together. And then I got the hang of it. He's an original beatnik, he's the only real beatnik I know, he's got that classic… That must be like hanging out with Cassady or Watts or something like that I reckon.

Leo: Exactly, that's what I saw in him I was like, okay we all have mistakes and he has this personality or whatever, but he's trying, you know.

Rak: He really has a good heart. He has a good heart, yeah.

Oroc: And that's where I really think this working with Tolle's ideas and working with the ego helps us all.

Rak: That's the next level, yeah, that's the mystery school stuff.

Oroc: Anybody that's trying to work in this field should have that book. Because Tolle solved the riddle for me, how can I talk about God without offending people? Because the word God alienates half of you. As soon as you stop talking about God, you start talking about the ego. The universal mind. He's very non -denominational, multi -denominational. Have you ever read much Tolle?

Rak: Yeah, the first book.

Oroc: The first one is nothing compared to the second one. The first one is for people who haven't got it. The second one's for when you've got it and now you need to know what the fuck's going on. The New Earth is an amazing fucking book. Four and a half million copies it sold in a week. Yeah, it was a publishing fucking miracle. Like, you know his story, right?

It's the classic shaman initiation – he had a mental breakdown and then he did all this work with in hospices he's a big hospice guy. Then he goes to Canada with no money, is in the shack, writes The Power of Now, gets published, sells a million and a half copies.

Rak: It took a while, he did a thousand self published copies first, they sold like a snowball. You and I know how hard they are.

Oroc: Goes on, Oprah and sells four and a half million copies in a month or something. I mean whatever they got out of it I mean I'm happy if 10 ,000 people have read my book and if you know four and a half million people are considering your ideas, yeah that's actually having an effect.

Rak: They say it's like the the more you hold the frequency of your consciousness you have an effect on the world by your very energetic presence, so when he does that of course it has an effect because he's he's gone right to the edge with it.

Oroc: Well that's what I'm saying. He is the real deal. Yeah had the breakdown, he is a modern spiritual master, and he's really he's found the truth and all the different things and he's distilled it and presented in a very non-denominational way.

Rak: So you know what? Here's how we start to shape the other practitioners and issues around Martin or Octavio. Everyone's got an issue with someone, right? But we share information and say, "Have you read The New Earth?" Right?

Oroc: Well, they've all got an issue with me. (laughs)

Rak: Well, I have to think about that one. You're okay, pretty much. But I'm sure someone's got an issue with you, right? You are in the spot, you know? But that's the suggestion to like read that book right?

Oroc: It sounds like we need to have a private…

Rak: …discussion group of other practitioners. This is what they're calling the Guild, which I like, right?  

Oroc: Well lets all get together I would participate in that.

Rak: Great. Great. So I don't want to put it off too late but you know, we're saying we could almost do a Cinco de Sapo next year with like a large grouping of 5-MeO people were talking about stuff and then have a private meeting.

Oroc: I'd say we need to get together before that.

Rak: Yeah, I reckon too.

Oroc: I'd like to resolve maybe to meet in Ashland this summer or something if that's feasible.

Rak: Maybe August in Ashland.

Leo: Of course my approach has been from Octavio, that's why I'm talking about him all the time, so please excuse me because he was how I got into this no? But he has what he's been...

Oroc: Yeah, please don't think I'm too critical of him.

Rak: But we need this honest feedback. Everyone needs honest feedback, right?

Leo: I look at it the same way you do it, or the same way you do it it's not like I am with him.

Oroc: I'm the one guy that they're going to have to listen to. In the sense that I've actually, you know, set the bar, so you know, and I'm also the one that didn't come into it from the perspective, well, he came at it as an addict, which is, you know, often when you cure an addiction, you cure it with another addiction. So in some ways he's addicted to being a shaman now.

Leo: Well, yeah, yeah, he is. Yeah, he loves it. He loves it. He was like "there's nothing better than this… I love how people went… when I see his smile, and I have it in camera because I see how he reacts to the gestures that he now reads…

Rak: And he's energetically attached because he takes that little bit of the pipe.

Oroc: I can witness three people and then I'm exhausted.

Leo: Yeah okay, what I was gonna say independently from his persona; technically what you were talking about the dosage and how it variates or fluctuates from synthetic from being from the natural source of the toad. Now of course you get what you know you're getting with the synthetic and you can measure and feel the effects and the other various... So what he has done is that he has collected, he collects from different toads and then he makes a mix because he has realized that–

Oroc: So he's tried to standardize it.

Leo: Yeah, but a lot, a lot together. He waits until like okay, it's over the milking thing, now I'm gonna make it all even. So that makes sense when you were saying yesterday, compared to that, and that's a good finding.

Oroc: Its still a little hit and miss.

Leo: Yeah of course.

Oroc: Compared to using a 3 .decimal scale. 'Cause honestly, like, the difference .015 and 0 .018 is dramatic. And that's such a critically small amount. And he just eyes it up, really? And these guys are like, oh, we just eyeball.

Rak: But he's using the same material for years, like he must know...

Oroc: I don't know. I think there's tiny amounts like what I use. Tiny amounts. He always eyeballs because that's part of his ego. I'm just pushing the steam of the minimum effect of dose. And the only way you can really do that is if you measure it, to bring it down bring it down to find that fine line. And everybody has a different line. You know, most of these guys down here just kick them out the door. Well, you're really just being a Ferris fucking wheel ride, you know, and it's 300 bucks to sit here in LA.

Rak: Is it really?

Oroc: These guys are charging 300 bucks. I could make a living doing it. If someone wrote to me and asked me if I'd do it I'd be like, nope. I don't do that shit.

Rak: You and Martin – where's that circus attraction thing over there on the boardwalk? It's like I

Oroc: I'm actually going to do some circles at Burning Man this year, but just randomly. Just have it in my pocket and wander around. Pop-ups. I want to do it with my crew when we put the Alex Grey mural out. At the end of it, I think I'll just sit with the whole crew and offer it to them at the Dr Bronners wash. Do it in there with the mural.

Rak: Fuck that place is like, it's like a Willy Wonka oasis in the desert.

Oroc: Can you imagine Alex and Allison and they're painting the whole week?

Rak: I'm grinning thinking about it. 

Oroc: I have to go get a bunch of crazy fucking swimsuits made up because I can't be naked around Allison all day. I just can't.

Rak: What do you mean?

Oroc: I just can't.

Rak: He's going to get a boner around Allison. Oh my God.

Oroc: That's not what I'm saying. Just being naked, having to look her in the eye with my old, I'm like no.

Rak: Come on, that's part of the tribal process.

Oroc: The Baranhas boys, when they work the tubs, they all wear tidy whiteies and things. They realize to be in there all day.

Rak: What about those, those - like natives, you get a little sheath. Little sheath with a cord over it.

Oroc: Yeah, I'm gonna go the old 1920s bodybuilder style. You know, like two colors, you know, glittery ones, glittery red, glittery gold, you know, some little way. I got a couple of those made up. Okay. I'm going to be running it out of the hot tub. You know, there's no way I can make it naked the fucking whole time with Alison around me.

Rak: So why does Alison make you go like this?

Oroc: She's like my mom. You kidding me?

Rak: Come on, your mom's seen your naked. Your mom's seen your naked before.

Oroc: Man, have you hung out with Alison a little bit? She's a character. She's a character. I don't know. Alex is fine. I'm curious if either of them will get naked. That's what I'm curious about.

Rak: Maybe, okay, here's an idea. They could be naked, but black body paint. Full black body paint. So they're in black still, but they're nude, right? They're all in black.

Oroc: There's photos in one of Alex's books of the two of them naked doing some art project. Alex would be already to get naked I reckon. It's going to be fucking fun. I'm really excited because I was a little bit no Lady Sass (his art car boat), you know, I was going to be a little like "Oh, I'll just go there and be a sparkle pony and see what that's like." Now, of course, that's all over. But now I'm going to be in probably one of the hippest spots on the playa, and everybody's going to come and ask. I don't have to go out and see my old art car being driven around by my ex-wife.

Rak: Oh, is she taking it? Is that why you're not doing it?

Oroc: I lost it with divorce.

Rak: You're meant to get half of everything couldn't you have just cut it in half?

Oroc: Man she fucked me over pretty good. But I was over it, I was kind of over it as well. It's all I'm fine with it. Yeah yeah seven years is long enough. I'm building a little one now a little Polaris. Do it as we all get together.

Rak: In the guild.

Oroc: For me to do it one to one sounds like I'm being a dick.

Rak: Yeah, exactly. I'm not picking on you. It's like, who am I? Why have I got authority to say this to you?

Oroc: Let's all get together as a group and discuss our concerns and maybe try and come up with a guideline of…

Rak: …duty of care or best practices…

Oroc: Or what we think is ethical behavior. Say, hey look what you're doing and what you're advertising is not the same thing.

Rak: That's the way to do it. You get get them in on ego levels like yeah we want to be part of this guild and have input and be with other practitioners and if you do want to be part of it well here's the duty of care and the standards we all agree to follow, you know.

Oroc: If we all get together we should have enough respect for each other as a group that an individual can't really take offense.

Rak: And the good thing of that is if people then agree to it and do it then the standards raise across the board or there's you know some type of legitimacy.

Oroc: Which is great, because it's not just half a dozen of us anymore.

Rak: Man, I just met like three more practitioners yesterday.

Oroc: There's dozens and dozens and dozens of people and I'm wondering where they're getting their supplies from.... These guys have all got... these different schools have evolved. I had a kid tell me that he would smoke a hundred mgs [synthethic] and go for a walk around the neighbourhood! Impossible! You'd be dead.

Rak: They need to call it what it is not what they think it is.

Oroc: Even as practitioners they don't realize. And the only way to show them is to probably give them the real deal.

Leo: They think the real deal is an overdose. That's what's happening. They don't want it.

Oroc: The same thing happens with DMT. Anything you have to flick them to a salt. It's like it's just the base state so that's how you restrict something, as you you pull it out and you flip it from being really acidic to really alkaline. Yeah so it creates a salt which is smokable from the crystal. That was Nick Sands contribution as he figured out how to smoke DMT as a saltable form. He realized it was possible. Previous to that they were injecting it it was all IM (intra muscular).

Rak: Which would be an interesting pathway to re -explore, IM, because you can measure it.

Oroc: I would love to do the ketamine IM. They say that's like visually the holy grail.

Rak: Yeah, I did that. There was a lot of visions you know, there was ten of us doing an experiment nine years ago and I swear to God this is what happened. It was like the group mind but we were like a car crash through hyperspace and Jenny was singing and projecting and David was the brakes trying to quieten her down because of the neighbors ; this guy was vibrating like a fish over here and this guy was bringing him down.

I was like captaining this thing like just at the wheel and realizing we were all hurtling in and everyone said, I swear to God this is what happened, someone goes: what's happening; someone goes: to us and that's what I realized oh, I could feel everyone's minds in there as we hurtled and car crashed it was a hyper spatial car crash… it was crazy and it's the ketamine, the ketamine you know, it gestalts people together and really enables group mind… I've only done it a couple of times maybe the intramuscular helped, not snorting it's not the same, you know.

Oroc: Originally they called fucking ayahuasca "telepathine". There was a reputation of that happening at group ayahuasca settings. The one time it's really happened with me was my best friend of mine who's a doctor back in New Zealand and we're out on his farm and he has a nitrous tank set up with the dentist mask. So we did a bunch of acid and then we were cranking it –

Rak: Yeah, nitrous on top of acid is the bomb.

Oroc: Yeah, and we had that going on where he would, I would think a question and he would answer it. He would think a question and I would answer it. And we had a conversation going on like this. We were just like, "Wow, this is cool." And it went, it was totally real. Like we were like, this is fun.

Leo: The first time I did mushrooms it happened to me and a friend and a dog.

Rak: This is sweet spot where it's like that that bandwidth where you haven't got full ego dissolution, you're not there, but you can start to play around with modalities of like group consciousness shifting consciousness around the siddhis, it's the siddhis right…

Oroc: You're connecting in with the field and the potentials in the field being here you know.

Rak: So when the default mode network goes down, no matter what entheogen you're on, then perhaps you can get that group consciousness more you know.

Oroc: If you increase your bandwidth to the field, rather than just having to rely on the five senses you're suddenly developing all these other senses. I mean like past life stuff, I don't, I don't, when people have these past life experiences I think you can experience anybody's past life.

Rak: You are everybody, you have been everybody, you know what I mean?

Oroc: Like yeah, it's not like reincarnation sense, it's not like you are this soul.

Rak: It's not linear, it's not linear.

Oroc: No, you can access, and that's why people get mixed up. There are none that gets burned in the middle ages, or there are Romans.

Rak: And everyone's being Cleopatra, right? Everyone's like, yes yes, you were Cleopatra–but so was everyone else.

Oroc: But theoretically, due to entanglement, the wave of that person's existence is in the field, and you can cross it, then you will experience it fully.

Rak: Well, that's infinity, like everything, everywhere, everywhere.

Oroc: It's a holographic.

Rak: It's holographic, distributed, yeah, like full smear.

Oroc: One of the best descriptions of Zero Point field I like is that it's an "ultra dense holographic crystal."

Rak: That's what breaks me every time. When I recognize that energy and I am the drop and the ocean tries to come into the drop and then the container of the drop has to just fall away and then you remember the ocean. 'Cause it's too much, it's too much for a drop to hold. But it's like, we do.

Oroc: The way I like to explain to explain in my talks is the model we were given of the billiard ball of the universe where you know, it's balls going around balls, whether it's moon's going around planets or going around suns or molecules going around becoming atoms, you know.

The strangest thing that's happened to me personally – actually like a professional, personal level, I still can't really understand, figure out what happened. I'm a photographer as well. So I went to Santa Fe at the Photography Institute and I did a workshop with this guy Chris Rainier who's one of my favourite photographers.

He's does these amazing black and white books about tattoos and traditional tattoos, how they match the landscapes and stuff. A phenomenal photographer. So I had a workshop with him and it turned out he works with Wade Davis, he's good mates with Wade Davis, and he works with him on the Vanishing Languages Program, and he's a National Geographic guy, right? So we headed off like fire, hung out all week though he was my teacher, and then he was like, "Oh man, you've got to come to Washington, you've got to meet Wade, we'll hang out," you know, and then we were tired as he was talking about involving me in an expedition in the Sahara.

This is where my book had just come out. It was blowing up. I'm like, "Wow, I'm blowing up on every end." Sent him a copy of my book, or gave him a copy of my book never heard back from him. And then a year later, I actually wrote him a thing and said, "Look, I don't know what happened, but I'd like to know what happened." He never replied.

And the only thing I can think I could do is we had this big banquet at the end where they were showing all the projects for the students and at one point I got up to a text that went outside and smoke and joint came back in to that particularly professional environment. But it was a paid thing that I paid for working on. And I mean, this is a guy that, like, he'd been to Burning Man and he was making jokes to be in class about, like, dirt roads with crystals at the end of it, about LSD labs and things like that. Yeah, it wouldn't seem like a joint anything would have been like, big enough to be. So I don't know if he just read the book, he just really didn't like the ideas or whatever. Because the whole chapter about Wade, and that paper in it.

Rak: So not knowing, You want to know, you want to know, you want to know.

Oroc: Just total disconnect after being the opposite of being like yeah, you know, you're going to get to come to fucking Washington and meet Wade and be hanging out. It really kind of shook me up at the time. I never really figured it out and what it was all about. I just figured one day it would resolve itself. I'll be curious when I finally meet Wade Davis and he'll be like, "Oh, you're the guy that wrote that fucking book." [laughter]

I've been talking to people who are just at Hammerhoff's Consciousness Convention that's always the same time as Bicycle Day so they're good to go. Stuart Hammerhoff, the guy that came up with the idea with Penrose about a quantum basis for consciousness, is an amistatologist from the University of Arizona. And he has a consciousness conference every year.

One year it's in Arizona, next year it's somewhere international. It's going to be in Shanghai next year. I've done a workshop with the guy and from what I was being told last night and on emails from people who were there, people are now aware of my book and my theories are actually like holding some water amongst other models and other research that's going on and which really is kind of surprising. And then there's talk that I'm like an invite to go to Shanghai. But it's interesting because he has it at the same time as April 19th, and it's the cutting edge of like consciousness research.

He's a really interesting dude. At the end of it I go, you know, you and Penrose at one point you were saying that you thought consciousness could be a form of Bos-Einstein condensate and he goes, "Yeah the problem with that, we abandoned that because we realized if consciousness was a true Bose-Einstein condensate, you wouldn't be able to differentiate from anything and all your information would just come in as one seamless whole.

[laughter] I was like, yeah, that's what I wanted to know. [laughter]

Leo: I was telling you yesterday about like pixels. It's like pixels. They just change that at that moment to whatever they need to be. They don't travel. They just turn it to.

Rak: Yeah, it's non-local. It's actually a thing, it's the source moving, 'cause it's permanently vibrating-ly, radiating-ly on. Like it's broadcasting, it's broadcasting.

Oroc: Don't start, don't start.

Rak: Anyway, it's an auto-poetic language.

Oroc: You hang out with the Tea-Faerie too much. Someone's gotta tell, if we're gonna have a guild, someone's gotta tell Tea Faerie to slow down.

Rak: We all have, mate, we all have.

Oroc: Cause if she just delivered it a little bit more slowly.

Rak: No, That was half as slow as Ashley when she delivered it.

Oroc: No, not even the poem. Just her consciousness, she gets so excited.

Rak: I know. I know. But you know what? But that's her avatar. That's her filter mechanism from Source, right? That's her. There is a lot of density of transmission there.

Oroc: I know. I know. Maybe we need to video it all and break it down frame by frame so we can unpack this huge transmission because we're missing it. Jesus Christ. It's going to be a cranking day flying here when the ship blows through. I love her to death.

Rak: Yeah, right. I love all the dirty underwear will be on the table. All the skeletons out of the closet at the Guild meeting.

Oroc: Oh, yeah. And now everyone can tell me what an arrogant prick I am. [Laughter]

Rak: Wow, if anyone's going to say that you can. [Laughter]

Oroc: I'll tell you what's disingenuous, The God Molecule.

Rak: I must say. I don't like that. It's catchy, but it's too brandy.

Oroc: Come on, Spirit Molecule. God Molecule.

Rak: I know, I know. And again, it's reductionist down to a molecule. It's not in the fucking molecule. Technically, God is in the molecule too.

Oroc: The finger that points to the moon…

Rak: And so someone who would say that, I don't find they either don't get it or they're not in full integrity and they're letting it be branded as this for something else right?

Oroc: Definitely not a full integrity model for both of the people that are now promoting that use of that term. It came from Martin.

Rak: Who's the other one?

Oroc: Dr. Gerry. Yeah Martin was the first one that ever used that term. And then Gerry nicked it. Martin was definitely the first person that ever used that term.  

Oroc: I just cringe because the spirit molecule was so huge and it's like it's just a kind of weak attempt. Years ago at my Burning Man camp, we had this party where my ex -wife accidentally massively overdosed the entire camp on extremely strong magic mushroom daiquiris. I'd say at least half the camp told me it was the most significant psychedelic experience in their life.

Yeah, and it was the right setting and it all worked and we got away with it. It was an accident, it was perfect, it was one of those deals. So my best mate, well basically she, it was the first time I'd ever got given Sassafras the best shit I've ever had too, I didn't even, I had it, I didn't even think it was real, but that's another story. But I'd gone to my buddy's bus, she had done some GHB and he'd told her not to drink, but we didn't ask her if she'd already been drinking, it was fucking nine in the morning or something, but my missus was from New Orleans. She already had a couple of big fucking strong Bloody Marys when she got up.

So we go over the G and we get back to camp and she's all fucking wibbly, right, passing out in the bus. So I go, I'll put you behind the bar for our annual Fat Tuesday Mardi Gras party and I'll put you in charge of making the daiquiris. So I'm like, okay, one level teaspoon, one gram, five per blender, everybody gets one daiquiri, tell them they can't come back for 45 minutes.

That was my instructions, right? I leave a pound of ground up mushrooms, super strong. One of Terrence's personal strains, really fucking psychedelic, in this container. And I'm going off and wandering around, I come back like 20 minutes and things are fucking almost empty. And I'm like, what the fuck is going on here? And I look over and she's got this crazy look on her face and she's just shovelling fucking mushrooms.

And I look around and I realize the whole fucking place is about to blow. People have got one in each hand. Oh shit, right? But one of the rounds, she didn't put any in. She had a placebo. Not intentionally, it just worked out that way. So my best mate and his Mrs, this English kid, who was world hang-gliding world champ and who I owned the house with in Dominican that I wrote the book in, he got the placebo.

So now 50 people go completely off their bats. Half of us managed to get out of the playa and the other half went to their tents and they had internal experiences with the other half of it. I had done a bunch of the sass as well thinking it was some organic shit that wasn't even real. And I just remember like breaking across the playa and it was sunny and stormy at the same time and everything was like 2D slight it was like one of the most amazing visual trips with my wife. Well it's such a great afternoon so I get back to camp and Rob and his misses have to listen to all these people dribbling and dabbling in about these phenomenal experiences but he's had the placebo so he's pissed but he doesn't realize he's had a placebo – this is the mistake. So then he goes and he finds half a blender and he finds a bunch of others half fucking and he puts them all in together oh and then he finds some more mushroom dust in the fucking thing and he chucks it in the blender and him and his missus drink it.

So eight hours later I'm getting out of my bus he's fucking crawling out of his tent he's fucking crawling across the camp to me... So the two of them had a real fucking psychedelic experience. And afterwards he goes to me and goes, "Ah, I never fucking understood the title of your book when I was writing it right?" And he said, "I'm in this fucking thing and I'm flying, I'm going through these fucking palaces that are all bejewelled, I'm in this crazy thing and I'm looking around and I'm fuckin' palaces that's what he was talkin' about.

Rak: Tryptamine Palace.

Oroc: Yeah. I've always liked the name of my own place. It is good, it is a good title. I thought that was funny… I think personally that it is true that psilocybin kind of breaks down to DMT in your system.

Rak: It converts to psilocin and that's analogous to DMT…

Oroc: Terence's strains are so fucking visual and longer right, then smokable. To be honest, I've had some phenomenal fucking visionary experiences , but they floor me I'm just like, "Ah, for an hour I can't even fucking move, usually." Toxins get me.

Rak: That's because of the body load through the liver.

Oroc: Here we are in Venice Beach, eh? Fuckin' hell. It's been a great psychedelic month. I gotta tell you guys that.

Rak: April's the best. I'm gonna try to do that every year.

Oroc: April is the cruelest month – we should redo that now: April is the highest month. TS Eliot.