I don't know about you, but I have studied reality pretty extensively over the years. I have yet to come across evidence that I would submit to a court of law regarding the existence of winged eyeballs, or other products of a hallucination. Having said that, several lawyers seem to be submitting such hallucinations in court thanks to AI, so maybe that technology can help us investigate this possibility of extracorporeal entities.

Ultimately, these are easily programmed experiences by people good at creating mythology. The more pseudoscientific one makes the mythology the better too of course or at least some loose connection to pseudoscience.

If we just say elves then it is obviously ridiculous. Self-replicating machines sounds STEM enough.

That was McKenna's brilliant con-artistry. Painting a STEM varnish on centuries old bullshit that no one would have bothered reading about otherwise.