Came across it because I've always enjoyed mushroom spotting in the nearby forests, and decided to explore them in greater detail.
Listened to a great talk by Paul Stamets on Jo Rogan's show https://youtu.be/xJ6Ym719urg Decided to look for a book to read, and Sheldrake's book popped up.
So much of it has been fascinating, and it's a very easy read, too. It's incredible how these organisms raise so many questions about life, from panspermia to questions about individuality. Well worth a read!
If you're already on to this, I highly recommend watching "Symphony of the Soil". It's a fantastic movie all about this, I really think it should be required watching in primary education.
I had mentioned Gabe Brown's work here ~3 months ago:
"Gabe Brown has been doing regenerative agriculture for over two decades on Brown's Ranch, over 2000 acres, in Bismarck, North Dakota successfully. Food crops plus cover crops plus livestock, all integrated. Lot of good results compared to neighboring farmers doing the traditional synthetic fertilizer / pesticide / tilling / monoculture approach.
There are others like him too. ..."
There are a few false positives (wrong term?) in the search results; could try putting his name in quotes in the above Algolia search or use some other option. I will try that myself.
> I am coming around to the POV that soil should be thought of as a kind of organism.
More people need to realize this! Healthy soils are enormously rich ecosystems. They're also fundamental to the water and carbon cycles. Soils are cumulatively a much larger carbon sink than the atmosphere, for instance.
> "under [psychedelic mushroom's] influence I realized that most of my consciousness was unknown to me. It was as if I had spent my life in a garden until then, and now I suddenly discovered that this garden has a gate through which I can enter a strange and wonderful forest, that was largely unknown to me."
Arguably some similar mind opening processes might be going on while dreaming.
Is it just me, or does it seem that our understanding of the full chemistry of life is still in the very early parts of its evolution?
I recently watched the documentary "Fantastic Fungi" and it had very interesting part about how myccelium have millions or billions of tiny roots connecting and crisscrossing through the soil all across the country, like a single macro lifeform conglomerating underground.
Most interesting was a comment about how we have recently discovered that trees communicate using these myccelium roots, things like signals of distress from lack of water or from nearby fires. I couldn't help but think of these roots as something like neural pathways. It is amazing how much we still have to learn about mushrooms.
Re: "macro life form" and "trees communicate", Gabe Brown and/or Elaine Ingham also talk about that. IIRC, Brown (regenerative farmer for ~20 years), quotes Ingham (soil biology scientist - soilfoodweb.com). So do some other regen ag people whose videos I've been watching, e.g. Richard Perkins of Ridgedale Permaculture, Sweden. Recommend his and Brown's YouTube videos for good overviews and even good solid technical details of what regen ag techniques are, and why they work (well, and cheaper than "conventional" ag). Both are regen ag farmers who have been doing it successfully for years.
You can try mycorrhizal fungi[1] in your own garden. I added them to half of tomato plants and these were visibly healthier and did not succumb to fungal rot after wet summer. As if the good fungi defended them from the bad.
Cool. 1/2 way Stamet's book Mycelium Running which I highly recommend. This dude seems to have the same, highly infectious enthusiasm on the same topic.
The way I like to think about it is people are like molecules of oxygen: in their natural state they are "free" and perform random Brownian motion. Society is about restricting the number of freedoms to a few, so all molecules can move either forward or backward, and produce work as a result. Psychedelics let people realise once again how much freedom they naturally have.
I have only taken psychadellic mushrooms on two occasions. But on both of those occasions I found that they clued me into the fact that all the various mental abstractions we have built for ourselves in life and society are not necessarily 'wrong', but definitely questionable. The first time I got the very intense feeling that money, societal roles, and national borders are not real and are in fact only collective delusions. The feeling was so strong and impactful it has shaped the course of my life henceforth.
The second time I had an infinite sadness for my middle-manager boss at a tech company because I realized how he must lead a totally unrewarding and incredibly fear-laden life.
It doesn't really surprise me that they are illegal.
The first time I took psilocybin -- it had been a fairly low dose (~1.0g I think) and it kicked in during the middle of me trying to wire up a PS3 to an A/V Receiver box and a stereo system, and a TV.
And all of a sudden I felt strangely, and began to giggle, which turned into uncontrollable, uproarious laughter.
My partner asked me if I was okay, and I said:
"Absurd. It's all so ABSURD. Look at me, trying to put the 'right' wires into the 'right' holes on these boxes of metal and plastic. What the hell even ARE humans?"
I thought about our laws, borders, our giant pieces of metal we shuttle around on strips of asphalt we've poured, making sure to carefully follow all the Big Metal Box Driving regulations.
If you could take a step back from modern human life and look it "for the first time", like a child -- you would fall over laughing too.
I've done it three times, and the last time I went outside while high (to acquire a donut) when I thought I was coming down from the trip (as soon as I stepped outside I that wasn't the case) and it was really eye-opening for me.
It was on the edge of comfort, I was paranoid people would notice I was high, because I realized that I didn't have all the mental and emotional barriers we normally put up when we interact with the outside world.
It truly felt like there was way less stuff between the outside world and my consciousness making all sensations and feelings way more intense and beautiful, but it also gave me an acute feeling of fragility, like I was very breakable because I was so 'open'.
I want to do it again when I'm less stressed, but I think I will take a slightly lower dose next time.
It can be helpful to do this with someone you highly trust and is sober. If you are ever worried, you can ask them if you are doing anything weird and they can reassure you. Or if you find yourself in a situation you dont want to deal with, you dont have to. ie: you get food to buy, but are too anxious to interact with someone and actually pay, or whatever.
Try it with a predetermined intention. Something like “explore”, “heal”, “connect with the universe”. Mindset and setting are key drivers for psychedelic experiences.
> all the various mental abstractions we have built for ourselves in life and society are not necessarily 'wrong', but definitely questionable.
If I may interject here: The mental models we, both as a society and individuals, operate on are at best incomplete and at worst inaccurate. But then again, humanly-speaking there are no and there will never be a complete or accurate nor true or even correct model — it is by design. And the most obvious (inward) reason is: cognitive biases (and therefore, evolution by extension).
That said, while on a micro scale it might seem imperfect/suboptimal, on a macro scale it’s actually beneficial because that’s (the imperfection) what actually allows us as a group of individuals to evolve and adapt.
I didn’t say that I still believed the things I felt on mushrooms, only that they impacted me. I still buy pizzas with money, but I now look at people with lots of money and boring/stressful lives the way people look at animals in the zoo—with a kind of half-hearted interest in watching them but also with a great sadness for them.
I think in GP's observations, "collective delusions" is the key phrase. I actually had this realization some time ago - as my mind accepted and internalized that all these mental abstractions are indeed collective delusions. We learn to intuitively expect the world to work in a certain way, but it only happens because almost everyone expects that too. Money is often referred to such a concept: it has value only as long as people believe it has value. That $10 in your pocket is only worth $10 if roughly everyone is willing to accept it in exchange for something, on the expectation that they'll be able to later exchange it with someone else. Rule of law is similar - it prevents people from seeking justice through violence, but only as long as everyone believes the law mostly works.
(This is why I consider attacks on public trust as an existential threat to society.)
I'm guessing shrooms let GP have this realization on overdrive, hitting directly and viscerally. I conclude that while not strictly necessary, psychedelics may be a fast track for one to do mental leaps, if somewhat at random.
Why are you using "collective delusions" as synonymous with social construct. My initial reaction is that the delusion was the other way around.That you were delusional (only while on mushrooms, I mean no offense) thinking social pacts were a sign of collective delusion.
I think generally the human population is well aware that these pacts can be broken at anytime. Armies can cross borders (imaginary lines), someone can take your personal property. But we use power to punish rule breakers.
Tomato, tomato, I guess. I think on mushrooms “because that’s just how it is” is a completely unconvincing argument. Which it is normally as well, but adults seem to kind of just go with it.
I've also taken mushrooms twice and in both cases was overwhelmed with empathy for another person's existence. One was a homeless person I walked by and another was a teacher I had met that night.
They definitely pry open mental models your mind has trained itself to no longer see (probably because it's too overwhelming to experience them at all times).
Actually the third person I felt a unique depth of empathy for was myself, and that experience was pivotal in my life.
I think one of the structural issues with legalizing psychedelics is that Western cultures don’t have support systems to help people integrate or even handle some of these experiences.
I don’t know if there is an industrialized society on the planet which can integrate these types of experiences. Capital and spirituality* do not mix; science and spirituality* do not mix.
*where “spirituality” is defined as knowing that your values and ethics come from some other place than your faculty for logical reasoning or from economic utility, however you choose to conceptualize that
I don't think that's necessarily true. Trade and exchange are just emergent properties of human experience. Every society has some form of it.
If we could infuse our current economy of capital with "psychedelic values", there's no reason it can't be integrated. Terence McKenna pointed out that capitalism is a novelty-expanding engine. If we can use capitalism as a tool to build better societies, why not?
The pipeline of logistics and labor that keeps us alive is amazing, and worth preserving. We just need to introduce a different method of thought.
> Money, societal roles, and national borders are not real and are in fact only collective delusions.
Because they are. Anyways, I love psychedelics. They dissolve boundaries, they allow you to peek behind the curtain. They show you about cultural illusions and that culture is not your friend, and the like.
Money is just a way of keeping track of what fraction of future output of our civilisation we decide to award to each individual and entity.
And national borders are just lines in the sand that most powerful AIs in the world, called armies and built out of bureaucracy, machines and people drew between themselves to share resources and people they exploit between themselves so they can continue exploitation and hoarding of most dangerous tech without major conflicts, which they learned in two wars, are not good for them, because they became too strong for their own good already.
And societal roles nowadays are like red Santa Claus. Nearly pure marketing vaguely drawing from preexisting superstitions.
I can't tell you anything about your middle manager but empathy gives you feelings of other people as you imagine them, not necessarily accurate feelings of other people.
For sure. Money, our roles and borders are nothing more than collective agreements on how we wish to see “reality”. Money is really just energy when you get down to it.
The hallucinogens reinforced your left-leaning beliefs and opinions. There's nothing wrong with that but it's not exactly revalatory knowledge that will be shared by right-leaning individuals such as myself.
Indeed I have taken hallucinogens and have had no such feelings, to the contrary I have leaned even more to the right after having taking them (although I attribute no causal role). It did produce an appreciation of the numinous, alongside the hallucinations, but that's about it.
Actually my thoughts I would have described at the time as being very conservative, albeit along the libertarian bent. I believed that there should be no intervening forces in the world to stop people from freely acting.
I have a friend who reacts to psychedelics like this, you are the only other person I've encountered (including reading forums) who has this reaction. It seems to be very rare, I wonder if there's an underlying cause or if it's just one of those things.
> "under [psychedelic mushroom's] influence I realized that most of my consciousness was unknown to me. It was as if I had spent my life in a garden until then, and now I suddenly discovered that this garden has a gate through which I can enter a strange and wonderful forest, that was largely unknown to me."
Crazy that psychedelics are illegal in so many places. There certainly are risks that need to be taken seriously, but their potential seems incredible.
I think what is unfortunate is that by being illegal they are driven into being recreational.
There's a lot of evidence that ancient peoples knew about and consumed psychedelics, but treated them spiritually.
A recent Joe Rogan interview[1] went pretty deep on it.
Many have "bad trips" because of the context (and too much too soon), or because the setting involves consuming other things like alcohol and cannabis. Psychedelics should be treated with respect. I prefer to take them with loved ones in a private setting.
> I think what is unfortunate is that by being illegal they are driven into being recreational.
I agree in sentiment, but would replace /recreational/ with /solely recreational and often consumed unsafely/. Recreation is an important part of life and there is nothing shameful about using these substances recreationally.
Fair enough. It's probably a poor distinction. It's not like we sit around singing hymns in robes... We certainly have a lot of fun and laughter, and that's a huge part of the experience.
To each his own, but for first-timers a more controlled environment might be best. I'm pretty introspective, so I like a environment where I can go deep with that. Too much chaos, or interruption would get in the way for me.
> There certainly are risks that need to be taken seriously, but their potential seems incredible.
The risk most people among my friends, particularly those who are generally scared of 'drugs' and who never had psychedelic experiences believe in turns out to be an urban myth:
is there any researcher who is really excited about the profound world-historical importance of fungi, but who has not taken psychedelic mushrooms? it would help me to be less skeptical of the rhetoric.
Christian Schwartz is a mycologist who was recently interviewed on the Crime Pays but Botany Doesn’t podcast. He has not taken psychedelic mushrooms, doesn’t know much about those species because it’s not where his interest lies.
He also expressed skepticism of the “wood wide web” upon first hearing about it, but as he continued to study all the species interaction, he became just as amazed as the “hippy dippy” types.
I don’t think the Radiolab guys or most of the people they interview are big psychedelic users either. Their episode on mushrooms is pretty awe-inspiring too.
thanks for the good faith answer, this is reassuring and interesting.
there’s a long history, starting way back with Timothy Leary, of psychedelic drug promoters doing sloppy, dubious science.
but there’s also a growing orthodoxy in some circles around psychedelic drugs — any mention of possible long term negative effects really offends people.
anyway i am glad to see the botanical aspects are understood and accepted by people who aren’t also evangelists.
Happy to share my enthusiasm! I understand the skepticism too, given that we’re into the second wave of psychedelics. All I will say about those is to pay attention to the research being done at John’s Hopkins. It is a reputable institution, and they’re rigorously looking at effects and potential uses without being, to my knowledge, strong advocates based on personal encounters.
It’s important to know that the psychoactive fungi are a tiny, tiny fraction of fungal life. The role of fungi in the ecosystem has really only started to be deeply studied over the past decade or two. It’s kind of like microbiome research writ large. We don’t know what we don’t know, and what we are learning is wild stuff. Like, forests only exist because mushrooms farm trees (see the Radiolab episode).
And even the more...Experienced...advocates are finding wild stuff in the greater fungal world. Paul Stamets, for example, has gotten contracts with DARPA because he’s finding all kinds of very effective antiviral, antifungal, antibacterial compounds in different species’ mycelia. He may have found a simple cure for colony collapse disorder—the experimental results look good. So don’t ignore their contributions when they get results—just maybe skip their TED talks ;)
There's another way to become less skeptical of the rhetoric too: see for yourself. There's no shortage of scientific literature on the safety, so that's a fairly poor excuse to deny obliging your curiosity.
Came across it because I've always enjoyed mushroom spotting in the nearby forests, and decided to explore them in greater detail. Listened to a great talk by Paul Stamets on Jo Rogan's show https://youtu.be/xJ6Ym719urg Decided to look for a book to read, and Sheldrake's book popped up.
So much of it has been fascinating, and it's a very easy read, too. It's incredible how these organisms raise so many questions about life, from panspermia to questions about individuality. Well worth a read!