Joe Rogan Experience #308 — Steve Volk Transcript

Transcript

0:00 The Joe Rogan Experience. me wrong but it's not all bullshit there's. There's some weird shit out there in the world. about all day like sam harris had some very logical points and i agree with him absolutely So instead of being right when it was one of those four people, Like I know it's Marty and you pick it up and it's Marty because Marty calls you all day.

2:55 because I had gotten so used to hearing the skeptical line, Was it scary because you thought, like, intellectually you'd be criticized And I mention this in my book. Well, when you say that it's been proven, how so? And they're the receiver, right? They're looking at an image on a computer, perhaps, or photos in front of them, and they are trying to send that image to the person in the other

6:26 But instead, you do enough trials, and the meta-analyses on these, skeptical about almost every story that I've ever heard. Unfortunately, I've met a lot like probably what's real. 32%. That's the idea. It's a small picking up on especially look at the way we live now where we're constantly constantly being You know what? they think that chimps repeat certain sounds and they might mean certain things, but it's

9:31 losing it. So, back And they had real nice controls on it. Wiseman was part of the experiment. Two out of the we're being stared at you know we would it would have helped us survive as a species yeah yeah it are. I knew it. just can tell that something just feels off in this area, a very straightforward intuition. Well I think Have police really used psychics to find victims or any of that stuff?

13:47 They screw with him when he's in the middle of a tough homicide investigation. And I haven't had a chance to sit down with that guy yet and investigate it. Yeah. I don't know if they have. But I'm really open to it because, again, Dionne Warwick, yeah. Make that a quote. Go ahead. I agree. acting like whoa you're fucking faking it and that is sort of like what what acting really is is the

16:45 Is there ever a guy who's fallen so far from grace? We fucked you again. where he played like a wizard and shit. like The Hobbit type movie. Cashing in and have some fun. He's just a fucking tremendous actor. Sad. when he was just creating something fucking magnificent. and Jay-Z didn't call him back. Well, how about maybe Or what if Jay-Z went to see

19:12 Like, God, fucking Robert De Niro's coming over. He starts rubbing your feet. Yeah. There were a couple things that motivated me. That's a good move. So I grew up with a ghost story, a ghost that was supposedly in my house. It would go on for tens of minutes at a time. explanations didn't fit with like a water hammer or anything with the plumbing, didn't

22:00 wake them up. that people hear a noise and they leap to ghost. But my family didn't. And so they spent nine months or a year trying to recreate the noise in various ways, trying to figure out what it was. vividly because to have father crowley come into the uh come into the the house with the vestments But that night, actually, things got worse. and we never heard it again.

24:30 You know, what the hell was that? this is the book I'm going to write. was tremendously real. And I wanted to explore that and see, well, could there have been anything Sure. 43. And then years later, the person who was supposedly the witness to the kidnapping admitted that they made the story up. And you asked the conclusion I came to, and I think it's a very healthy conclusion.

26:52 No, it was not a rat making a noise that big. Yeah, at its loudest, like a sledgehammer getting weld on the roof. we were scared to show me show me that there were raccoons jumping on the roof because it was Yeah. raccoons. I'd get courtroom sketch artists and just put them on every corner of the house. What the fuck are you Is that what it is? How about no flashes?

29:28 The cameras are a lot easier to handle than if somebody was sitting here drawing. the secret show thing. We don't have to do that anymore. People want to rush to some kind of conclusion, whether they have enough evidence or data Yeah. But this is all when you were six. Earthquake? There was that one in Ohio that they just found out that we're making the earthquakes.

32:15 It actually can even impact sort of the eyeball, Something really unusual was happening. ghost ain't shit compared to the sun you know what i mean the idea that we're living in a multiverse But I think it's very possible that something remains of you and that you're not just skin tissue and bone tissue and blood. woo, woo, but it's not. our internal experience of the world.

35:39 there is he just a crackling is he just the energy that makes all those cells fire? begin to come back. And this is, again, a relatively common thing. How does I looked at near-death experiences in the book, so that's one of the things that drew me in there You know, I don't think it is smoking gun evidence that there's an afterlife, Your own brain produces the most potent psychedelic drug known to man.

38:24 Janice Minor Holden, a researcher, did a study where she went through all the medical literature Two of them had minor errors, the sort of errors I'd have, you know, You know what? Oh my god. Did they have the questions and everything's been recorded, of course? to your brain. I mean, do you ever feel in a psychedelic experience that you get accurate information?

41:23 and there's other people that believe that you're just accessing the the imagination and the mind is interfacing with distortion of She was a psychologist who were telling these same kinds of stories. And what I find really, They were sort of shunted off to the side. do with them. Finally, he's out near the elevators one day. A woman goes into cardiac arrest.

43:44 they generally just tell them to just take notes on what's going on. He asked the student if he never interfaced with this patient at all. it's completely in your book oh yeah the story is it recorded anywhere else um you know intriguingly I want to clean up my relationships before I go. They start talking about living hard in the time I don't think she hit that story as hard as she should have.

46:44 There's a researcher, are you familiar with, I remember their last name fuck it does when you have these trips. Well, here he was seeing diminished activity, less activity. I think I might be. anecdotal evidence that the pineal gland which is the third eye of eastern mysticism produces this And I know I fucked up the first part, the way you say it,

50:12 Yes, I do. Yeah. That's what I do. ritual form and it helped them i love the idea that it Because if you do it, you're just going to go, Like afterward? You would. He was one of the witnesses to what became known in UFO circles as the Stephenville Lights, this January 8th, I think, 2008 sighting. And it was a solo daytime sighting. So he has this sighting.

54:46 He's a machinist. These are people who are raising cattle right and um the cliche of of ufo sightings is that it's it's quote it's x who see And in it, there are this series of sort of inverted cones, which he intuitively suspected to, you know, he points the gun at it and then quickly, within a second or two, realizes, I forget exactly how long he was looking at it,

57:13 Are they telling the truth? Well, like I said, I would have started with the telepathy, actually, because I could look He's still got the same friends. And he's running that life. I mean, one of the things that interests me about that story is they were very near a military base. I was rehearsing my role. the skeptics. That's equally freaking ridiculous.

1:00:06 swear our asses off. You know what I mean? come in the form of a disk? I'm sure they do. He's on his iPhone showing me pictures of clouds. loose and sparking and we are smoking aliens jo. I totally met people who are so invested in this idea Crazy land. profit in it for him if anything he just faced embarrassment over this well i i wish a story And who knows what level of achievement they've had technologically.

1:03:26 in terms of UFOs when he was in space. Wow. Edgar Mitchell, why do I think that? perspective and made him think that there's some way of uniting spirituality and science. He, that there was an alien spacecraft at Roswell, and that it's pretty fascinating stuff. and out like that and we don't really know what the fuck is going on well that whole the you know

1:06:41 that this is as advanced as we're ever going to get. What the fuck? no one saw coming before Like, I'd like to experience that stuff. Don't people seem strangely disinterested in privacy now too? Everybody will be able to find out anything that anybody is doing. This whole connection between every human being on the planet through the internet really hasn't really been figured out yet.

1:09:16 There might be a lot of things going on, a constant move towards improvement. So that's what Edgar Mitchell experienced, right? But they see just how fragile our little planet is hanging out there in space. We're talking about $100,000, $150,000. Yeah, Edgar Mitchell's take on it is very trippy, man. His bones went away. Have you ever been to the Keck Observatory?

1:12:06 station that's down at like 9 000 plus feet and then you go even higher they have the the up there with that high altitude Yeah. I mean, it was only a couple hours of just staring at the sky, that's really interesting that fascinating about the overview effect you can show people these It's like What are you going to sleep glad that you're saying this because she wants me desperately to go tent camping with her and i and

1:14:56 Trust me. that purell on your hands bitch and go back to work so you get in your house and you're you know and appreciation for what nature actually is. It was in philosophy class, actually, too. What the fuck's great about that? on the book that like the whole idea that i was going to go study lucid dreaming and learn to Oh makes me want to throttle those little fucks. Oh, if you're so skinny that your skinny jeans are sagging

1:18:17 So they're just pretending to not give a fuck about anything. I mean, look at the whole Apocalypse Now filming and that whole story, the whole arc he went through. Check for danger. constantly surrounded by people and packed into a place and i think your senses they they adapt Potentially fuck you up. And that's what we're working through. a member of the military. So is it possible that, you know, people are encountering at

1:21:51 The numbers are just too crazy. well you know maybe at some point some of these But so many people are full of shit and so many people have told lies believes that we're being visited by What year did he run? Red flag. And people immediately, and this is, again, the language was UFO, Those are the press people that you root for to get killed by the aliens that were in that mars attacks movie

1:24:48 Did he ever... And this is 2008. They got rude. But we're all walking around with camera phones now. Yeah, Bigfoot to me was not on the radar. that really plague us, Unless he got here on a fucking spaceship. I decided to stay away. you fuck. but he's not a silly boy when it comes to ghosts and shit like that. Their life is haunted. I went out with a ghost hunter

1:28:02 That's part of the research And, look, there were times when the people didn't want to think anything was going on in their house It's just dust and stuff floating in the air near the camera lens. it you know be really really still in that room see if the amount of orbs seems to decrease uh I bought that documentary. They're always there. And when the bugs would fly around the fire on one camera, they would come out like these rods because the camera couldn't compete with it.

1:31:20 that i'm just meat and i just thought you know what if if if it's knowable if it's observable that there's more to me than that, I should be able to find a way But I'm sure from the scientific community, like the encouragement is like so strong and profound and almost hero-like that it sort of encourages him to be this aggressive force of reason. mushroom trip, if not several,

1:33:21 That's that thing that they put on you and stimulated and I have not seen it, and so I'm not going to be able to describe this in great detail, that is that part of what created Totally. That's a great point because that's the other possibility, right? That's just how it works. you really are receiving information you really are looking at yourself in the world in a totally

1:36:56 Are you a big – do you do this on a regular basis? And it's like, oh, great, it's coming back online. are we going to talk about the pills? You were this close to having a lucid dream because you were aware you were dreaming while you were dreaming. You just completely control your dream. I do it. that I would find myself outside the car I got lucid and realized, oh, I'm in this freaking recurring dream.

1:40:19 the idea of lucid dreaming for the book. Yeah. So how did you go about manifesting a lucid dream? It's pretty cool. So there's different ways you can train for it. and he's peeking in through the window. the dream i'm dreaming and to feel yourself like to feel this you don't realize until you've had the laws of physics play no part. They just let you know what is best in life.

1:43:27 You fuck and you fly. dead. I had two friends die of cancer right around the time of the book, when I was working And I realized, that's fucking weird. I could smell her shampoo that she used on her hair, It was really awesome. Well, you're essentially entering into another dimension. Where does this experience really come from? How could the neurons, this three-pound gelatinous

1:46:50 the no free will thing. to meditation that we have no free will. And if you tell people – what was the other one? because they were told they have no free will. anywhere near as much as the people A lot of people equate that with a religious idea. From a scientific perspective, the idea is that you're motivated constantly by a series of factors that are beyond your control.

1:49:56 It sounds completely ridiculous right now, but I don't think that's ridiculous in the another way of, and this is the part that really gets beneficial for your daily life, the part that And here's how you would do a state test. What if he did push you and it was out in real life and all of a sudden you thought you had a dream so you started fucking random people?

1:52:05 Digital clocks will really malfunction and machinery in general will malfunction because you flick that light switch over there and it's actually connected to Yeah. You know, it was like hard. We sell the best shit we can sell. So when you're doing a state test when you're awake, right, I found that my state tests were actually making me more aware and more mindful of everything that was going on around me all the time.

1:54:49 I saw a movie that gave me a great technique. A guy said, when you come to a doorway And there was nothing there. I didn't maintain it for very long. You think so? If I have a lucid dream, this is what I want to do. What if you have nefarious intentions? Because here's what happened. if you say to them, this is not a dream, right so i know totally what it's like to be fucking x-man because i said i'm going to prove

1:58:27 and then I remembered or the smell of her, Sorry, fellas. Can you do that? Oh, okay. he realized this is not something he wanted because again, Joe, remember it feels real No. What? But the girls are always nice to me. fought dragons and shit my dream in a lucid dream yeah yeah yeah okay my lucid dreams are really We should all of us try Number one, I'm flattered that you already know I won't be back.

2:01:44 I'm getting in the spirit of this. they're in R. Crumb comic books. ex-girlfriends in my dreams i noticed like i'll be like okay next come in come on in the room I understand. So he's discovered – and look, it's enriched my daily life. It was, it was fantastic. Well, that's it. testing and asking that question is is this a dream, right? When you're really dreaming.

2:05:12 kind of weird imaginary world you're creating inside your mind. you don't know what the fuck is talk. Is there some message for me here? Something my subconscious is gnawing on that I should be aware He decided to, well, confront it's the wrong word because it sounds adversarial, Yeah, it just kind of blended into him. You're accepting it. Yeah. writing it it was my first book um i've been writing for years and years and years but like

2:08:30 and i ended up approaching a dream character in um a store and i said to them i i need help and And it just totally reframed the experience of writing that book for me. And in a strange sort I would finish at 2.30 or 3.00. I wonder if we could get people can't remember what the address is for it. His book is really phenomenal. It's very scientific,

2:11:31 in advance of the show, could you please leave it? Because they just did it recently. I was to ended up running up the flagpole and decided, you know what? Well, that's great, man. Yeah. it's way more electronic and more more than the general industry so when this You know, I wanted to get to the bottom of that. I cannot do this. Didn't really believe in it.

2:14:23 who haven't stuck their neck out on this publicly because it's really fraught, man. fuck out of here i'm gonna have my spoon right up your ass ain't no spoon bending party you know The idea of the prize? And I love Sam, but I just think that maybe he, again, to get this Gansfeld effect at 32% versus 25% It is completely Yeah, and you have to do it in a small – the big thing is you have to do it in a small sample size.

2:17:26 who said he approached him and couldn't work anything out. into what they're doing over there. like French and Wiseman, the guys I mentioned before, who will engage in a reasonable conversation about this. you know, makes you go, maybe it is an emerging skill or maybe it is an emerging sense or, as you said before, a declining one because we don't use it in the natural world anymore. Yeah, and don't cultivate it at all.

2:19:18 there is threadbare evidence for that. It's not something that I would put my name on and reputation on is not something I want to acknowledge. Because when you really look at these people, when you Yes. I just want to say one more thing. a cloak and dagger enterprise to get people to live their best possible life. and gentlemen we got a lot going on this week we got uh tomorrow we got bringing on adam hunter

2:22:18 going on over there? Okay. Well, Brian Stop all this queer ghost shit. at i'm gonna be at avn with uh sam tripoli and it's about to be announced uh later you're not You just fucking threw a goddamn monkey wrench. Love you.