Matthew Terndrup is a virtual reality journalist and content creator who’s interested in exploring how the combination of psychedelics & virtual reality can help the process of self-discovery. Matt traces the influence that psychedelics have had in helping to shape key technological innovators including the inventor of the mouse Douglas Engelbart as well as Steve Jobs. Matt has been investigating the history of VR and psychedelics, and has found that there are indeed some interesting connections. He talks about some of the VR experiments by psychonauts Terrence McKenna and Timothy Leary, as well as some of the potentials for using psychedelics for creative inspiration and the amplification of psychedelic experiences.
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:05.452] Kent Bye: The Voices of VR Podcast.
[00:00:12.015] Matthew Terndrup: My name is Matthew Turndrup, and I'm a VR journalist and content creator. So I'm looking into the idea that VR is sparking a new level of consciousness. And I'm diving deep into the rabbit hole, if you will, of what that means and what it's like to tap into this idea of another level of consciousness.
[00:00:34.523] Kent Bye: Right, so what have you found so far?
[00:00:37.167] Matthew Terndrup: So far I have found that if you look into the times of when VR has kind of come up, if you look back in like the research days when people are trying to figure out on a large societal level who we are as like a civilization. So if you look back into the early days in like the 60s when that was coming out of the research labs, around the same time we're looking at a mass spark of consciousness, a shift in consciousness through the Summer of love time when we're trying to figure out who we are in this struggle like there's wars going on and Psychedelics are coming in at that time as well and it all kind of sparked all around the same time So yeah, you wrote an article on upload VR which was released on April 20th kind of like a day that's honoring 420 and
[00:01:27.325] Kent Bye: So maybe you could talk a bit about your preliminary investigation into the psychedelic connections of the history of VR and psychedelics.
[00:01:35.463] Matthew Terndrup: Yeah, so like I was talking about is like I'm looking at what is sparking consciousness on different levels and psychedelics was one of the obvious ones. You're looking about like the late 60s, early 70s when people are taking these strong, strong drugs and experimenting with their mind and figuring out who they are. So diving into that and seeing VR kind of paralleled together has been really interesting and eye-opening for that kind of like environment where you're shifting your consciousness through these psychoactive chemicals and then you figure out who you are as a person and then you start creating other things like VR. So there was definitely experimentation back in the days of VR kind of from psychedelics.
[00:02:23.850] Kent Bye: And what specific connections did you find in that way?
[00:02:26.170] Matthew Terndrup: Yeah, so the inventor of the mouse, Doug Engelbart, was tested on a government level of trying acid, and from there he kind of figured out an input solution for computers afterwards, and it's kind of like an indirect result, I would say, from psychedelics coming out. So there's people like Steve Jobs who have also been talked about taking psychedelics as one of the best times in his life, one of the two or three or whatever. there's that and then there's like people that are around that kind of space like Ted Nelson is supposed to be somewhat involved in that psychedelic time back in the days and there was like people writing about it too like writing about VR and consciousness and psychedelics at the same time so there was like a magazine called like Mondo 2000 back in the day so there's like definitely been like parallels and correlations What I'm trying to figure out is how to record what these different levels of consciousness are. I'm just trying to talk to as many people as I can who is back in the day and learning what they had to say.
[00:03:30.010] Kent Bye: Yeah, that and Terrence McKenna was, you know, one of the pioneers of psychedelic exploration and I know that he's done a number of lectures about virtual reality. I'm not sure if you've heard some of those lectures and can summarize some of the things that he says about VR.
[00:03:42.133] Matthew Terndrup: Yeah, so Terrence McKenna and Timothy Leary back in the day, like I was saying, these ideas of trying to figure out who we are as civilization, you know, and those kind of like luminaries and pioneers like Terrence McKenna and Timothy Leary brought a lot of these ideas to life. And it allowed people to think about virtual reality in a different way. So Terrence McKenna would come out and he's talking about, we're going to be able to build these societies that we can live in. And Timothy Leary's coming out trying to figure out what to do with it as well. He was talking with VPL Research back in the day. And oddly enough, this was after he got out of prison. So he started to have these forces going around him. Making sure that he's not like trying to like start this revolution that the government doesn't necessarily want so they started Enforcing and making sure he just gets out of prison and he's looking for kind of like that legal way to expand consciousness So he did like a mind mirror experience there was one where doing a suicide in VR that happened there was like VR raves kind of around that same time and and It's just opened up the minds of a lot of people and it's going to be interesting to see who that kind of like Psychonaut, Terrence McKenna, Timothy Leary like figure is going to come out in this new wave because there's a lot of trends that happen in each wave of VR so it's going to be interesting to see who's going to come out who has been like surrounded by like the internet their entire lives and kind of open up our minds to some things we haven't thought about yet.
[00:05:13.062] Kent Bye: Yeah and it's something that it's a sort of an area that I've been looking into consciousness research since like 2005 so a good 10 years of looking at and then doing a number of interviews actually with other podcasts that I've done and so you have this saying within these spiritual communities that we're a spiritual being kind of having a human experience and so you can make an argument that a human body is an avatar for our soul and that we're kind of getting tricked with all this haptic feedback that this is the reality but yet I think there's the potential that when you go into VR it could actually be getting closer to our true soul essence. We could start to have identities that represent who we truly think we are rather than sort of these physical avatars that we really have very little control over. And so what does that mean in terms of identity and a sense of who you are to be able to express yourself in that way?
[00:06:03.576] Matthew Terndrup: Right, so that's where I'm looking at is with VR, you put on a headset and you kind of figure out who you are. Depending on the content, you are either a headless body floating around or you see your arms and you move around and you're like, who am I? What am I? Where is this place? And that is a lot of the same questions that you ask when you're going to dive down and figure out who you are as a person. You have to ask these questions on necessarily like a spiritual quest or whatever and it's kind of like VR is condensing us and getting us closer to the internal like you were saying who we are because we can break down who we are through this right you're no longer a person with a regular body unless that content tells you you are and now we're also being able to put ourselves in other species too like you can be an octopus now and you can move your arms around in a like a fluid way that it's almost like those appendages as an octopus or whatever is so natural so it's almost like tapping into a part of our brain that through evolution and stuff like it's still in our brain and now we're actually able to unlock that through VR and it's very natural and intuitive and it's really interesting to see the potential of something like that.
[00:07:11.667] Kent Bye: Yeah, and it makes me think immediately of Lawnmower Man, which is the whole theme was that VR has the potential to unlock these latent human potentials. You know, in that case, he's able to do like this psychokinesis and move objects with his mind. And the thing that I see that's already happening is with James Blaha's experiences of being able to correct his lazy eye. So James Blaha had a lazy eye, and he's like, oh, I think that if I go into VR, I want to be able to see in stereoscopic 3D for the first time. And so he created this experience where he was increasing the intensity of his weak eye and then decreasing it on his good eye. And he was able to see in 3D for the first time. But not only that, but after using it for three weeks, 20 hours, he was able to basically rewire his brain so that he could see in 3D for the first time. So what that tells me is that VR has the potential to put an input into your perceptual system that is affecting you at a subconscious level that you can't get on any other medium. And the principles of neuroplasticity, being able to rewire your brain, what is the possibilities of being able to have a VR experience that's going to unlock these latent human potentials that we don't even know about yet?
[00:08:21.681] Matthew Terndrup: Yeah, we're definitely rewiring our brain, right? And it comes to an ethical responsibility for the developers. If you're putting people inside your consciousness or your mind, don't fuck with them too much, right? Like make sure that we're all kind of trying to better our society and go through and rewire our brain and something that can benefit us all rather than just, you know, kind of make a little bit of money just because you make some cool content. And, you know, I think there's a lot of creativity and there's a lot of things, experimentations that's happening right now. I'm looking forward to seeing us as a community push it even farther and see how far we can go on this new medium.
[00:09:04.169] Kent Bye: Yeah, and so there's a whole subreddit on Reddit called Rift Into The Mind. Maybe you could talk a bit about Rift Into The Mind and what sort of discussions happen there.
[00:09:13.325] Matthew Terndrup: So, I'm not on Rift Into The Mine a lot, but it's like a smaller sub-community on Reddit where it's pairing the use of psychedelics and VR at the same time. And this seems to be something that's just kind of come up now. Like, even though, like, in the 60s, 70s times, there was definitely people doing psychedelics, there's, like, people in the VRML days in, like, the 90s who were doing, like, LSD and stuff like that. But from what I hear is you're not doing them at the same time. You take the psychedelics and then you reflect on yourself and then you create a business. You do something really fun. But now is the time where it's being paired together. And I think that has a lot to do with the technology that's fast enough to be able to run these experiences. It's easily accessible. I don't know if it's a recommended combination. I haven't actually had first-hand experience of like taking acid and VR at the same time, but it does seem like it would fit well because VR does seem very man-made and LSD is also very manufactured, right? So it seems like it would be paired well together if you're brave enough to do it.
[00:10:17.474] Kent Bye: And so what has been some of your own personal experiences of discovering who you are or why you're here through these psychedelic explorations?
[00:10:24.973] Matthew Terndrup: So I've definitely had psychedelic explorations and that was through seeing what was happening on like a culture in college where there's like people going around. There was like a time where a really good acid hit Tallahassee, Florida at a point and I just watched like the amount of creativity kind of flow out of that as well, right? But for me like there is definitely times where you can take like these psychedelics and you figure out who you are but It gets to a point where you have to kind of go out and figure out something out past that, right? Instead of being looped up in these experiences so often, right? So for me, one of the self-discovery points in my life was going across the country, like driving about three times in like eight months and just trying to figure out who I was like in the country you know and there's like these obstacles that you have to overcome if you're in the middle of the desert and your uh your tires break down or whatever you know like you got to figure out how to go over these obstacles and Once I figured out who I was kind of like in the middle of the desert in like Texas, you know, like I was able to come in and with more confidence come into like the VR community and try and shake things up and open up people's minds and towards something else. I always try and ask the questions that people don't necessarily ask. I kind of come off on a side tangent sometime and people are like, I've never thought of that.
[00:11:50.377] Kent Bye: Yeah, so I guess, you know, when you're either taking these psychedelics to be able to be inspired to create an experience and then there's the idea of using VR as kind of like a psychedelic experience or to kind of replicate that, you know, what do you kind of see the potential of being able to create a VR experience that's able to open our minds?
[00:12:06.838] Matthew Terndrup: Yeah, so I think we are able to tap into like the visuals of a psychedelic experience and make patterns, you know, fractal patterns that move and they're fun to look at. But the thing about a psychedelic is it's tapping into your brain chemistry. So when you think certain things, it changes your environment, right? So how you think, where you are, what's happening is all mixed together. And for VR right now, it's still condensed. You're only seeing certain stuff. You're only experience what the developer has made. If we can just open it up a little bit more so that it's more intermixing everything together, you'll get more towards that psychedelic experience. But it really hasn't gotten there yet where we're tapping into our mind and being able to change things at will.
[00:12:52.372] Kent Bye: Is there any literature that you think would be interesting for people to check out if they're interested in kind of learning more about either this history or some like sci-fi novels that talk about this a little bit?
[00:13:03.075] Matthew Terndrup: Sci-fi novels are good, you know, everybody talks about, you know, like the Ready Player One and Neuromancer, but I would say just go out and find the people who were the pioneers back in the day and just start asking them because a lot of this information from the past hasn't been necessarily recorded in easily accessible ways, so just find the people that you want to talk to and just start asking them questions and then you'll get much more out of that than just reading Literature, you know, there's some good stuff. Oh what the Dormouse says is a really good one that tops into like the underground culture of like how Technology was sparked in the San Francisco area. Just look up that one that has a lot of good surprises in it Great.
[00:13:44.361] Kent Bye: And finally, what do you see as you know, kind of the ultimate potential of virtual reality and what it might be able to enable?
[00:13:51.148] Matthew Terndrup: It's really up to you right the person that when you go into VR and you create the content I think the potential like I said is to Expand our consciousness or whatever. You just have to be able to think in that type of mindset so to kind of like bring us together as a society to change and to Solve these problems together. I think VR can really bring us all together for that Anything else that's left and said you'd like to say Yeah, I'm working on a VR film school. I'm trying to get off the ground a little bit. And we're going to start with a hackathon kind of idea of trying to get hands-on training for 360 degree filming. So that should be a lot of fun challenges to solve of making sure that these creative people have the tools that they have to be able to create this content that we are all looking for. So that's going to be really fun to work on.
[00:14:45.587] Kent Bye: Awesome. Well, thanks so much. Thanks. And thank you for listening! If you'd like to support the Voices of VR podcast, then please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash voicesofvr.
