Psychedelics open new portals to conscious experiences | Donald Hoffman and Lex Fridman 

Psilocybin containing mushrooms saved my life. The drastically reduced my benzodiazepine withdrawal allowing me to quite illicit pill addiction after three years of heavy daily use before it would had became medically dangerous to quit. It has also helped me survive depression.

In this interview we’re seeing the dissolving of the physicalist position. Younger, influential physicalists like Lex are open to other perspectives in a way that older generations wouldn’t entertain for a second.

Bless these conversations in a somewhat soulless world.

Do you know what is truly amazing? Is that two brilliant people are having a very intricate and intelligent conversation about the conscious experience and the true nature of objective reality and this video has only 3k views & in turn that is what is wrong with us.

It interesting how the further we go, the more the lines between ancient spiritual traditions and scientism blur. Scientism will have arrived at the same point as the spiritual traditions after it's run its full course, the difference is the path taken. Whereby the spiritual traditions took a "from inside, out" approach, Scientism is doing the opposite, working from the outside, in.

This conversation makes me think about the prophetic dreams I had back at a low point in my life. There was something about those dreams that felt important and I told my family about them right after they happened just took a few months to pass from each dream to have both of the dreams to be realized. They were major life events like being at a funeral and having my nephew who didnt even exist yet come up to my family to introduce himself, then the second dream was even more clear about my grandma getting sick and dying because I told my family about it before hand they were witnesses to it. Now some ppl in my family share there dreams with me wanting me to tell them what it means or asking about my dreams its been about a year and I haven't had a dream with that strong feeling of importance since. But that experience let me know there's a lot more going on behind the scenes, and life is nowhere near pointless or coincidental like some seem to think.

If Lex ever grows to the point he can be open to Magical traditions (within his own culture even), he’s got potential to really start connecting dots around consciousness

you are born to forget and you die to remember.

Lex - you seriously needs to try some psychedelics and experience the walls of reality being torn away. Perhaps then it will inject a new feelings of adventure rather than suffering from the idea that we might not be close to knowing anything.

I’m 70 years old. Back in the day, I used to do acid. A lot. I never saw things that weren’t there. I saw what was there in a very different way. If I knew of a source to get it now, I would really like to do it again before I die. ❤

I tried mushrooms again after a very long time , and I will say I sensed and appreciated the shift in my perception the days after the trip very much. The actual trip was so intense , my yoga mat turned into a very dark magic carpet ride to say the least 😂 with Terrence McKenna’s echo of laughter coming out the TV . It’s so hard to let go of the ego 😅

"There is no need for psychedelics for spiritual enlightenment. In fact; the purpose of the veil of separateness is so Self could experience companionship itself. Let's thus not mess with ourselves and our beautiful bodies. Instead let us instead remain grounded in the realization that the meaning of life is love." - Wald Wassermann, Physicist

I remember watching this full interview sometime last year, and I couldn't fully get behind the idea. I agreed that evolution is not really showing us the full picture, but I was (and still am) mainly a physicalist However, about a month ago I had the most intense psychedelic experience of my life, and at the height of ego death this has all been revealed to me. I was floating through space as pure consciousness. And it was not my consciousness, it was universal, part of everything. In that moment I felt like I knew everything there is to know about the fabric of reality. I even knew how math and physics worked, and how they both fit into an unified framework. It all made sense. I reached the conclusion that the basis of all things is knowledge/consciousness. Subatomic particles are mathematical entities, and therefore units of information. People are just large scale concentrations (or portals) of knowledge. And the reason why we're drawn towards certain people is because they possess or are searching for the same knowledge. And there are different ways to get to this knowledge, psychedelics, science and transcendental meditation being some of them. And then I realised how cool and unprecedented it is to be human, and to have a brain capable of accessing this thing However, I knew that at the moment I was in 'virtual reality', or a different dimension. And I knew that once I've returned to the body, this knowledge will lose most of its meaning. Because our dimension (Hoffman's operating system) doesn't function like the one I was in. It's like the fabric of reality got "frayed" while I was in that state, and each string could be seen clearly. But normally all the strings are together and overlapping, so it's hard to distinguish them (could this have something to do with string theory??). In the end I woke up from the trip at will, because there was nothing else left to know. I asked all the questions and got all the answers. I am still naturally skeptical though, because I've been familiar with these ideas for a while, and I was in the middle of reading David Deutsch's "Fabric of Reality", which discusses notions of virtual reality, consciousness and epistemology. However, I'm glad this had led me to put 'david hoffman psychedelics' in the RU-vid search bar, and revisit this interview. My intuition tells me that the scientists who are closest to solving the mystery of reality are likely to have tried psychedelics at some point in their lives

@7:13. "Spacetime...that's what the old folks did." Tighten the chin straps on your headset: it's Donald Hoffman. Love how he boldly tosses out hyperbole and metaphor like a hand grenade to blast a new portal in the imaginal realm.

Lsd is amazing I take a few doses per per day or the day after the visuals go into a mute tone and you can think deeply about alot of things and figure things out quickly

Omg...takes me to the next level...this interview has given me a deep unfolding that I will carry me for a long time

This. This conversation between Lex and Hoffman is what I was looking for. Both of them are trying to get to a conclusion but our mere human terminologies are so primal, that in itself makes it difficult for someone to understand the causality and reality. Something we experience with psylocibin or dmt. Hoffman did a really good job at making it so consumable and Lex's genuine way of interpretation, makes it easier for us to fathom. Need more these.

Psychedelic’s definitely have potential to deal with mental health symptoms like anxiety and depression, I would like to try them again but it’s just so hard to source here

I still don’t understand what makes consciousness so special? Why is our subjective inner experience so important that it could possibly be the substrate of reality/? Feels like such a huge leap!

I see a multidimensional, implicate field describeable in physical terms as energy and pattern arranged holographically, oscillating at the Planck scale in a way that gives rise to what we describe as physicality.

What was explained to me by The Mushrooms during a 30g dose that lasted about 13hrs, is that whatever mechanisms give us imagination can be used- in a lot of different ways including psychedelics- to allow us to perceive and communicate with beings from other dimensions. It's hard for a 7th dimensional being to manifest here, it makes them cosmically nauseous and is basically a really bad trip for them. It's better if they stay where they are and manifest through our imagination to communicate. We think our imagination isn't "real", and dismiss it, but we couldn't be more wrong, I was told. The power of all our imaginations is creating reality in all dimensions somehow, and it's really important work for some reason, and every person no matter how vile, returns to the source a sort of hero for at least trying. I was also told it's not a simulation (simulacrum), as there is nowhere else quite like this place, but it is a game of some sort that needs to be played. They picked 3D space for the game because, bound under the flow of time, its the realm of consequence. Things really matter here. Any intelligent life from 4D space or above has little sense of the consequence for its actions because time is relative and controllable. If they make a mistake they can just sort of relive it instantly and get it right, so its really hard to learn certain universally important lessons anywhere else. I was also told humans aren't the only players here in 3D space, and some of the other players have nearly unrecognizable forms, and the game itself is so complex that it's largely beyond the comprehension of most the players (myself included). I was clearly told though that its not a game of money or power, and your gonna wake up in the afterlife a loser if that's all you pursue. It's actually a game about love and understanding and growth and cooperation, and even though the game is still playing out, the winner was decided a split second after it started. Good won. But the game has to finish, and Evil is so mad about losing that it is being a bad sport and its gonna do anything it can to ruin the game before the finish. Because it never learned right about consequences for actions, and its scared of whats coming. But...there is an open secret that Evil just can't understand. Good forgives. In the end, Good won't exact any price at all, and will forgive Evil completely for all the awful it caused. And Evil will learn about forgiveness that way, and will forgive Good. And we- the good, the bad and the ugly- are all going to walk back into heaven together. Heaven is the reward for suffering the game. I might have just been trippin really hard though. Heh. Love ya, Lex.

One of the beautiful apspects of existance is the unknown for knowing everything is like being stuck in a prison with nothing behind the walls.

The portals are through music 🎶 and many people had a blast visiting those portals

'The Field' explains everything. Our brains pick up signals that always exist, existed, will exist. All of what we sense is just to accommodate us on planet earth. (And then DMT happens)

I found this phrase to be touchingly beautiful - “I can’t wait read the papers of the next generation. I want to see them “

I’m a reading ‘Why Materialism is Baloney’ by Bernardo Kastrup. Excellent book. And yes in the book he makes a full and clear case that consciousness must come before materialism. Now that is how I see the world as an illusion of my consciousness.

Something saw me when I was under the influence one time. It was human looking a head that was half white and half black. No face just like a mask or helmet that covered his head. He was male. Standing on a flat plane and controlling other planes. He turned his head and acknowledged me. Totally true and scary as hell.

LSD changed my life, and I have seen it change people's lives right in front of me, always for the better (in my experience).

Lex, after listening to this guest. You have to get Robin Carhart-Harris come on and talk about psychedelics & consciousness

even on 20mg of DMT, you will understand there is so much more to consciousness than we can even comprehend.

LSD scratches the surface

This theory feels right to me, I wish I had chosen physics instead of geology.

There is only one big consciousness, we are the receptors where the program runs and can compute consciousness.

Me while tripping on shrooms:

I can’t help but wonder if there are parallels between this and QFT.

Listenin to this peakin on acid is like a comedy special with profound insights

I felt this in a weird way. My dad did lots of lsd as a kid and for some reason Everytime I use psychedelics I feel potent connection to him sometimes bringing me to tears, to the point where I’ll look down at my legs and think these are his legs. I can’t stress enough how strong the emotional connection to him is

This is amazing. I’ve never thought of kids as portals, but it’s so true.

Cause and effect, negative and positive polarises. Interfacing with consciousness is done on the approach through the intent of the individual. You're only as conscious as your mind will let you be.

A profound experience(s), doing magic mushrooms in the late 1980s in the early autumn months and communing with the moon. Her gravitational leash became a string, her tugging on my waters, me laying in an open field. The leaves were squirrels and they were leaves, and then they were carried away by winds. And then all the surrounding grass, billions of blades swaying in moonlight, made contact me with, the weird teenager soaking up the dew at two o'clock in the morning. In my waking world, I'd walked across the field thousands of times ...

Right this man is.

I like how he refers to sex as 'going through a physical process'.

awesome, thank you

Lex…would love to see you discuss the Man Being book series. It touches on everything you’re discussing. I’m starting to think that you’re the author 😂 👀

Hoffman is such a gift for the next-gen science, i have absolutely no problem in understanding his concepts, next ting is to design new experiments that opens up portals to the "terrain" behind this earthly VR interface...

thank you that was great !

Psychedelics are more than likely the reason that humans developed religion. In my experience, even though I was aware that I had a DMT experience, I still felt as if I had spoken to God or a higher power. It’s easy to see why ancient humans would perceive such an experience as “God speaking.” LSD and psilocybin allow more of our subconscious mind to communicate with our consciousness and can have enlightening experiences in their own right. But with DMT, it’s as if we are witnessing the birth of our consciousness (or soul, spirit, etc) along with the creation, existence and afterlife of the entire universe simultaneously. Even that description is underwhelming compared to the experience of a DMT breakthrough itself. IMO, If such an experience is bewildering to the deepest parts of our subconscious, it has to have a connection or frequency to something far more powerful than what exists in this 3D world of ours… Happy traveling fellow psychonauts!

Great and inspiring conversation! However, you don't need psychedelics to open inter-dimensional portals during conscious states. Deep meditation (alone or in groups) and hypnosis can do it too, once you slow down your brain activity, reaching theta waves. I did meditation experiments of the kind with the Institute of Noetic Sciences and EEG measurements seem to show significantly different activity when people connect to a portal (I call it stargate because it also offers a channel for telepathic communication with cosmic intelligences), feeling energies, vibrations and, in a few cases, seeing extra-dimensional beings. People can also experience physical and/or emotional healings during these sessions. This kind of practices date back millennia (to ancient Egypt, Atlantis, Lemuria) and have been used in closed circles (also involving scientists in modern times) ever since. People tend to be lazy and psychedelics offer just a shortcut to achieve similar experiences and results. During this kind of meditation experiments, somehow going beyond the holographic reality as we perceive it with our senses (which are essentially frequency filters), time can also "bend" in ways which are verifiable on multiple devices. I sometimes did catch such time anomalies on tape, on my laptop or phone or involving other devices. This is all still consistent with quantum physics and the effect of the observer on the reality we perceive. And electronic devices can be considered as observers themselves.

yes they do, on mushrooms I've seen walls fall away with a larger dimension behind them full of abstract geometric beings, on DMT I've seen a rip in reality to a much higher dimension inhabited by giant blue people that were curious about us and were surprised we were able to get there.

Fascinating to hear a physicist validate ancient kabbalistic teachings

I love Donald Hoffman, he connects the dots like no on else. And he is right, space-time is coming to an end, we are heading towards a meeting with destiny, with ascension. The moment when we realize that we are the transcendent singularity of being at the end of time!

I think he was very convincing while saying time and space may not be fundamental in reality but may be fundamental to our interface with reality. I started to become less convinced when he tried to explain that consciousness may be fundamental in creating time and space. I feel its a leap to say that because you've found that time and space may not be fundamental it must be consciousness that is. I don't understand what's to make us think time and space or consciousness is fundamental. I'm doing my best to follow along.

I am working on it.

We can brain it up all day - but seeing portals of connectivity and others whelms was known to many by taking acid at Dead shows. It's so amusing to see scientists now coming up with a way to describe this

Somadhi, nirvana. It goes back thousands of years. Self realization is when the ego dissolves and all that's left is your true nature. 5meo DMT takes you straight back to the original source consciousness which all of us are a part of

Love from KS!!

This is so great

Kudos from RunicNeonTelescope!

Any ‘paper’ I could conceptualise about this topic dissolves as soon as it’s made. Because the fundamental paradox I experience is that any attempt by consciousness to ‘grasp and understand’ its own rules is, naturally, occurring within consciousness. Writing any paper on this topic is necessarily to overlook the entire area of study. Intellectually entertaining but of no relevance to consciousness itself. Eventually you’ll be brought to your knees and have no choice but to surrender. Hope you’re having a good day 😂❤️

So I understand it now the big bang was the plug the computer in or turn the power on

Big banging back bong hits of Salvia while trippng on acid and shroms is always fun.

Robert Monroe did a tremendous amount of work in this area. Read his book 'journeys out of the body'

So he saying consciousness is like this sea and every human is a portal of that sea?

Perhaps it is just the Revealing of the field the lifting of the veil enough for us to see that morphogenic resonance field that is the path to portals

Lex sounds so much like James Franco that if you close your eyes, it sounds like you’re listening to a long deleted scene from Pineapple Express.

Funny thing is Hinduism talks about all the nuances of the universe, consciousness and spacetime. Infact the bhagavatam purana talks about how various planes experience time in a different way ie the scale of time that we feel on earth is completely different, or how consciousness actually interfaces with our world from higher planes

My Dad says i am an arsehole Is that like a Porthole?

After my recent DMT breakthrough I can CONFIRM 👍

I've never seen Hoffman go to this place in his career.

Of course consciousness creates brains

"Or are we screwed?" LOLLL

Define consciousness.

When you look into this portal or connect with this drone / vessel it convinces you that you are this one vessel and nothing else. that's the trick, it's what makes infinite creation possible.

I really hope this reaches you, Mr. Fridman, as I'd like your opinion on a theory of mine that came from a psychedelic trip from when I was younger If matter and antimatter were made in the same instance, could it not be possible that antimatter simply "flows" in reverse to matter? Meaning it could have created a "backwards" universe that could, in time, collide with this one, either destroying it, or starting the system over I truly believe the universe is just one system that goes on to infinity, no start, no end From an outside observer, it could be reasoned that it simply doesn't exist, like virtual particles but on a much bigger scale

Soon enough we will find out that we don’t need to worry about anything other than what interests us, the ones we love, and the ones who love us. Psychedelics are absolutely amazing and even if you are terrible at or don’t know anything about mathematics and or engineering, etc. you will at least see it in action and gain an appreciation for it. As we have arrived to quantum computing, things are going to get really interesting. As far as history plays out, I have a feeling that the hippies were right about a lot of things. Mostly due to the psychedelics. Or that the NWO and governments around the world have still been allowing psychedelics to flow so they can keep the pay ops going.

This was a triumph

Consciousness creating brains is the most basic concept of classical samkhya/yoga philosophy.

can you extract the dmt from your kids peneal gland?

Well as hermeticism stated in the principle of correspondence. As above, so below; as below, so above. Meaning natural law operates the same from a quantum level to a macro level, suggesting that the theory of the big bang is incorrect. Just look at how our universes are structured, to our veins in our bodies are structured similarly. That is just one level of perspective, there are many other examples, but they all have a fractal pattern. No matter how microscopic we look, to have far we zoom out, natural law follows a pattern, suggesting another theory. We are within something bigger, a living creature perhaps? Most likely.

This sounds like Scientists are trying to come up with Mathematical Formulae describing the Ain Soph Aur from Holy Kabala. Can one actually describe what's beyond the Void and Limitless Light with Base Ten Mathematics? I hope so, and I think so. Even a superficial description would put Worlds beyond where we are now. Great video.

The book Phenomena by Annie Jacobson definitely opened my eyes to Qigong, mushrooms, and “extra phenomena,” which to some is just pseudo science. That is, until you find out the CIA had literal projects dedicated to these fields. Its fascinating.

Taking magic mushrooms helped me significantly with my depression. It allows your barriers to come down to love yourself.

Have we also considered that at a so called theoretical end of energy a "heat death', we'd probably still be able to experience entirely novel unexpected phenomena? That is to say our knowledge now is more of an expression of our point in the grand scheme of the universe than it is a tree we can pick all the cherries from at will.

You're only seeing your own nervous system, it has nothing to do with G.O.D. .

Yeah, what he said.

i am a psychonaut and i didn't get the portal stuff

Each consciousness is not unique. The mechanism by which that consciousness expresses in the physical universe is unique. The consciousness flowing through each and every mechanism is fundamentally the same.

I feel like LSD is like losing my mind but also I feel like waking up kisee how people can really lose their minds on these substances they're so Incredible strong like how a thing can make you so aware the realization of waking up

Your over thinking this and you DONT need psychedelics ..... look towards Bob Monroe and the Monroe Institute

Portal's bro portals

I never had a bad trip.

At what point in history did we have solid grasp of the universe? There will always be questions, mysteries.

I haven't heard the whole interview so perhaps this has been answered but I need the definition of what Donald Hoffman considers a portal. Kids are portals? Ok then a portal to where before they are born? Seems like that's less of a portal and more of a consciousness generator. Portals imply that something already exists prior to the doorway being open between there and here.

Vince McMahon

🔥🔥🔥

When I was younger, a few days after taking either lsd or magic mushrooms, I had a very strong flashback when I was trying to go to sleep, I was flying above a very bright many coloured, continually morphing fluid, I could feel wind in my face as I flew and hear my heart racing, so I opened my eyes and was back in bed, could hear the birds sing, people chatting, but my heart beat was still fast, I would close my eyes and instantly be back flying, eventually it stopped, but it freaked me out and now I'm thinking holy crap ! 😂

I have experienced almost every psychedelic that most people have heard of and many more but my perspective is very different than most peoples. I believe that the psychedelic experience is a much lower form of consciousness than the one we experience day to day. I think humans have a severe novelty bias that makes us believe that new and unusual things are more profound than the familiar. I believe that psychedelics work by actually closing off aspects of consciousness and limiting our experience which allows us to focus and close in on other aspects.

No discussion on the differences between imagination and consciousness

Lex always looks sleepy, lol.

Theoretical physicists have recently discovered that the vacuum isn't empty, but creates particles/antiparticles which then annihilate one another. They've also discovered the Higgs field. This is just the beginning. So I don't see it as a silly idea the possibility that something which permeates the entire universe may have an influence upon the development of life in those parts where it can develop, like here on Earth.