Danny Goler is a Russian-born psychonaut and independent experimenter known for the "Code of Reality," a claim that people under the influence of the psychedelic DMT can see structured symbols in the reflection of a red laser. He presents the symbols as proof that reality is a kind of simulation, and he says DMT has also put him in contact with extraterrestrial beings. Those claims, rather than any UFO sighting, are what bring him into UAP media.

Before the laser work, Goler built a varied career in entertainment and sport. VICE reported in January 2025 that he served in the Israeli military, worked as a small-time actor, owned a minor skate brand and competed on Ninja Warrior in 2014, and The Why Files has described him as a former parkour athlete and stunt performer. He has lived in Los Angeles and, by 2026, in Florida. He says he has taken DMT more than 7,000 times since first using it in 2010.

According to his own account, Goler settled on his method in August 2020 at a Thai restaurant in Boulder, Colorado: smoking DMT while looking at the cross-shaped reflection of a 650-nanometer red laser. He says the reflection resolves into rotating characters resembling Japanese katakana, and he argues that they exist outside the viewer's mind. He bought the codeofreality.com domain, sold laser kits, published what VICE called a pilot paper meant to lay groundwork for a scientific study, and later framed the effort as a nonprofit research project. Goler told VICE in early 2025 that more than 300 people had followed his method and seen the code, other accounts put the number of alleged witnesses above a thousand, and several of them appear in a forthcoming documentary, The Discovery.

Researchers have offered more ordinary explanations. Neurobiologist Andrew Gallimore, who called the claim potentially important if the pattern proved consistent, has suggested that laser speckle on the retina could prompt the DMT-altered brain to generate the characters. Andres Gómez Emilsson of the Qualia Research Institute has noted that many people who try the method see nothing, and researchers Zeus Tipado and David Luke have pointed to illusion, suggestibility and priming, since Goler publicizes what participants should expect. VICE also reported that some participants described distressing aftereffects.

By 2026 Goler had become a recurring figure on paranormal and UAP channels, appearing on The Why Files spinoff The Basement in July and in clips posted by UAP accounts about his reported encounters with DMT entities. His laser protocol is a recent, much-publicized variation on simulation theory, notable less for any confirmed finding than for the informal movement of psychedelic users who now try to reproduce it.