The message of the mushroom, by Terrence Mckenna

[neuroflux]

This was originally written in the Mushroom growers guide, by Terrence Mckenna under another name.

Under the influnce of the Tryptamine molecule Psilocybin this is what he says was told to him via his human nervous system:

 

 

"I am old, older than thought in your species, which is itself fifty times older than your history. Though I have been on earth for ages.....

 

Speculative, and sensational, yet damn interesting!

 

For more written works and information please visit:

http://www.deoxy.org/mckenna.htm

 

Neuroflux

 

Truncated to Fair Use excerpt....

 

Clay

[Boerseun]

Why, exactly, is this in the Biology Forum?

 

Mushrooms speaking to you should go to Strange Claims, if it should go anywhere at all.

[DarkColoredLight]

I think it might have something to do with another book by Terence called "Food of the Gods." Something about apes+mushrooms=humans.

 

first voice:

These symptoms suggested that our evolution, i

suppose, from the animal kingdom

Into the human kingdom

itself was catalyzed, or triggered by our encounter with

These hallucenogenics, and

 

Second voice:

Yes,

we are an ape with a symbiotic relationship to a mushroom, and

that has

Given us self reflection, language, religion and

all the spectrum of effects

That flow from

these things.

 

First voice again:

And one can

only wonder how these hallucinogens might effect our future

Evolution as well...

 

Second voice again:

They

have brought us to this point, and as we make our relationship

to them

Concious, we may be able to take control of our

furute evolutionary path.

 

I believe the first voice belongs to Terence, and the second to his brother, I think. NF might know more of this conversation than I.

 

More info on the site in the original post, or from Mudvayne(everyones favorite math metal group).

[Queso]

Well look at the network fungi have underground,

 

it resembles the neaural network in our brains.

 

Mushrooms talk, but not in english,

[DarkColoredLight]

You might want to supply a image of said underground fungi. Then we might be able to look.

 

 

at least a link,

DCL

[Queso]

You might want to supply a image of said underground fungi. Then we might be able to look.

 

 

at least a link,

DCL

 

I attended a lecture back in Los Gatos,

I don't have links to offer.

 

California's right on the brink of the future, though . .

 

It's impressive and expensive.

 

But seriously, do a lil bit of research and you'll find us and them intertwined and everything is conscious, tonight.

[DarkColoredLight]

I don't "do a lil bit of research" unless I'm really extra interested. I prefer conversation over disipline in regards to human contact, because I can disipline myself.

 

On a lighter note, do you have some key words other than "underground fungi" that might be of use to add this self disiplined research?

 

Let me remind you of:

They have brought us to this point, and as we make our relationship to them Concious, we may be able to take control of our future evolutionary path.

 

I don't know if this can be done, but that's not the question at hand. The question is am I willing to do it? I say yes. So you can help me do that, or you can tell me to do it. Which one is taking control of our future evolutionary path? Which one is practicing what you preach? Or better yet preaching what you practice.

 

 

I really don't know where I'm going with this, but those key words could still be of use.

[Queso]

Hrmmmmm,

 

Well if you're interested in how the underground fungi network resembles our human neural network in our brain,

 

read about how mushrooms are introduced into areas of toxic spills,

and within 18 months all the toxicity in the land has disappeared

and there isn't even a trace left in any of the mushrooms!

 

The lecture was on mushrooms, and recent studies scientists in california have been doing to further understand the way they work and the way we work with them.

 

I wish I had more to offer, just vague memories of an amazing speech.

 

I'm the forgetful type, sorry man.

[DarkColoredLight]

Understandable.

 

I'll see what I can come up with.

[neuroflux]

The mushrooms fine network of mycelial connections is nearly immortal, only the sudden toxification of a planet, or the explosion of a parent star can wipe it out.

 

You can read the original message at:

 

http://www.deoxy.org/mushword.htm

 

I had the chance to go to A sacred plant conference in Whistler B.C, i met the man who discovered that you can clean up oil spils and other toxic waste with certain fungi like mentioned above.

 

The theory goes that as we descended out of the jungles and onto the plains we would of discovered The mushrooms growing form the Dung of Grazing animals.

As we forged for food, we would of tried the mushroom.

The effects would have been astonishing to early man.

Interesting theory.

 

NF

[ughaibu]

Yet reindeer remain reindeer.

[Turtle]

The mushrooms fine network of mycelial connections is nearly immortal, only the sudden toxification of a planet, or the explosion of a parent star can wipe it out.

 

 

If not immortal, then at least long-lived; if not world encompassing, then at least among the largest of living organisms.

 

The discovery of the world's largest fungus - up to 8,500 years old and carperting nearly 10 square kilometres of forest floor - has raised questions about what constitutes an individual organism.

 

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s828525.htm

 

:)

/forums/images/smilies/banana_sign.gif

[ughaibu]

On the question of what constitutes an individual organism, slime moulds are interesting. They can be dried, cut up, posted, rehydrated and off they'll go. They appear as single entities but can dissociate to constituents and ooze their way through cloth.

[Michaelangelica]

http://www.deoxy.org/mushword.htm

NF

Interesting link, Thanks

Do you know anything about the genetics of mushrooms/ fungi?

We are supposed to be closer to them genetically than plants.

Perhaps this is why we can produce Vitamin D in our skin (as do mushrooms) but not photosynthesise?(see vitamin D thread)

 

Soil scientists are just discovering how many fungi there are and how important they are to soil fertility.

I think we have named about 10%. Naming doesn't mean we know what they do.

Mushrooms dissolve plant nutrients externally and maybe leave some over for the green plants.

 

The extraordinary complex interactions of fungi underground, sometimes over many acres, is, I sometimes fancy, a little like our fragile communication, via little wires, on the Internet.

[Tarantism]

i cant believe that i have missed this thread for so long! i have been waiting for someone to bring this up, as i have some very long-winded and strong opinions about McKenna's "Stoned Ape" theory. please, if you have the time, spare me some!

 

there is a very circumscribed place in organic nature that has, i think, important implications for students of human nature. i refer to the tryptophan-derived hallucinogens dimethyltryptamine (DMT), psilocybin, and a hybrid drug that is brewed in the rain forests of South America, Ayahuasca. this latter is a combination of DMT and a monoamine oxidase inhibiter (MAOI) that is take orally. it seems appropriate to talk about these drugs when we discuss the nature of consciousness; it is also appropriate when we discuss quantom physics.

 

it is my interpretation that the major quantom mechanical phenomina that we all experience, aside from waking consciousness itself, are dreams and hallucinations. these states, at least in the restricted sense that i am concerned with, occur when the large amounts of various sorts of radiation conveyed into the body by the senses are restricted. then we see interior images and interior processes that are psychophysical. these processes definitely arise at the quantom mechanical level. its been shown by not only McKenna, but John Smythies, Alexander Shulgin and others that there are quantom mechanical correlates to hallucinogenisis. in other words, if one atom on the molecular ring of an inactive compound is moved, the compound becomes highly active. this happens, as an example, when the psysolin in the mushroom enters out body, and metabolized to become psilocybin. to me this os perfect proof of the dynamic linkage at the formative level between the quantom mechanically described matter and mind.

 

hallucinatory states can be induced by a variety of hallucinagens and disassociate anesthetics, and by experiences like fasting and other ordeals. but what makes the tryptamine family of compounds especially interesting is the intensity of the hallucinations and the concentration of activity in the visual cortex. there is an immense vividness to these interior landscapes, as if information were being processed three-dimensionally and then processed four-dimensionally, coded as light and evolving surfaces. when one confronts these dimensions one becomes part of the dynamic relationship, relating to the experience while trying to decode what it is saying. the phenomenon is not new- people have been talking to gods and demons for far more of human history than they have not.

 

it is only the conceit of the scientific and postindustrial societies that allows us to even propound some of the questions that we take to be so important. for instance, the question of contact with extra-terrestrials is kind of a red-herring permised upon a number of assumptions that a moments reflection will show are completely false. to search expectently for a radio signal from an extra-terrestrial source is probably as culture bound as a presumption as to search the galaxy for a good italian restaurant. and yet, this has been chosen as the avenue by which it is assumed contact will likely occur. meawhile, there are people all over the world- psychics, mystics, shamans, schizophrenics- whose heads are filled with information, but it has been ruled priori irrelivent, incoherent or mad. only that is validated through consensus via certain sanctioned instrumentalities will be accepted as a signal. the problem is that we are so inundated by these signals- these other dimensions- that there is a great deal of noise in the circut.

 

it is no great accomplishment to hear a voice in the head. the real accomplishment is to make sure it is telling the truth, becuase demons are of many kinds: "some are made of ions, some of mind; the ones of ketamine you will find, stumble often and are blind." the reaction to these voices is not to kneel in genuflection before a god, becuase then one would be liek Dorothy in ther first encounter with Oz. there is no dignity in the univere inless we meet these things on our feet, and taht means having an I/Thou relationship. One say to the other "you say are omniscent, omnipresent, or you say you are from Zeta Reticuli. youre long on talk, but what can you show me??" magicians people who invoke these things, have always understood that one must go into such encounters with ones wits about oneself.

 

what does extra-terrestrial communiaction have to do with the hallucinogenic compounds i wish do discuss? simply this: that the unique presentational phenomenology of this family of compounds has been overlooked. psilocybin, though rare, is the best known of these neglected substances. psilocybin, inthe minds of the uninformed public and in the eyes of the law, in lumped together with LSD and mescaline, when in fact each of these compounds is a phenomenologically defined universe unto itself. psilocybin and DMT invoke the logos, although DMT is more intense and more breif in its action. this meas that they work differently on the language centers, so that an important aspect of the experience is the interior dialogue. as soon as one discovers this about psilocybin and about tryptamines in general, one must decide whether or not to enter into this dialogue and try to make sense of the incoming signal. this is what i ahve attempted.

 

the following is a quote from T. McKenna. i find taht many of his statements hold true in my life, though due to the age and experience gaps, to a much lesser degree.

 

"i call myself an explorer rather than a scientist, becuase the area that i am looking at contains insufficient data to support even the dream of being a science. we are in the position comparable to that of the explorers who mape one river and only indicate that there are certainly other rivers flowing into it; we must leave many rivers unascended and thus can say nothig about hem. this baconian collecting of data, with no assumptions yet about what it eventually might yeild, has pushed me to a number of conclusions that i did not anticipate. perhaps through reminiscence i can explain what i mean, for in this case describing past experiences raises all of the issues."

 

one of the interesting things about DMT is that is sometimes inspires fear- this marks the experience as existentially authentic. one of the interesting apporaches to exaluating such a compound is to see how eager people are to do it a second time. a touch of terror gives the stamp of valitity to the experience because it means, "this is real". we are int he balance. we read the literature; we know the maximum doses, the LD-50 and so on. btu nevertheless, so great is ones faith in the mind that one is out in it one comes to feel that the rules of pharmacology do not really apply and that contril of existence on that plane is really a matter of focous and good luck.

 

im not saying that there is something intrinsicially good about terror. im saying that, granted the situation, if one is not terrrified then one is essentially out of contact with the full dynamics of the situation. to not be terrified means that either one is a fool or that one has taken a compound that parylizes the ability to be terrified. i have nothing against hedonism, and i certainly bring something out of it, but the experience must move ones heart, and it will not move ones heart unless it deals with the issues of life and death. if it deals with life and deatht then it can and most likely will move one to fear and perhaps terror, or it could even move one to tears or at best histerical laughter. these places are profoundly strange and alien.

 

being monkeys, when we encounter a translinguistic object, a kind of cognative dissonance is set up in our hindbrain. we try to pour language over it and it sheds it like water off a ducks back. we try again and fail again, and this cognitive dissonence, this "wow" or "flutter" that is building off this object causes wonder, astonishment and awe at the brink of terror. one must control that. and the way to control it is to do what the entites are telling one to do, to do what they are doing.

 

im mention these "effects" to invite the attention of experimentalists, weather they be shamans or scientists. these is something going on with these compounds that not part of the normal presentational spectrum of hallucinagenic drug experience. when one ebgins to experiment with ones voice, unanticipated phenomina become possible. one experiences glossolalia, although unlike classical glossolalia, which has been studied. students of classical glossolalia have measured pools of saliva eighteen inches inches across the floors of churches in south america where people have been kneeling. after classical glossolalia has occured, the glosolaliasts often turn to ask the people nearby "did i do it? did i speak in toungues??". this hallucinogen induced phenomonon isnt like that; its simply a brain state taht allows the expression of the assemby language that lies behind and beyond language as you may know it, or primal language of the sort that Robert Graves discussed in "the White Goddess", or a Qabalistic language of the sort that is described in the Zohar, a primal "ur speech" that comes out of oneself. one discovers one can make the extradimensional objects- the feeling-toned, meaning-toned, three-dimensional rotating complexes of transforming light and color. to know this is to feel like a child.

 

another quote from McKenna, this one more to the point (as im sure you are uttering now "FINILLY!")

 

"naturally, as a result of the confrontation of alien intelligence with organized intellect on the other side, many theories have been elaborated. the theory i put forth in "the magic mushroom growers guide", held the stropharia cubensis mushroom was a species that did not evolve on earth. within the mushroom trance, i was informed that once a culture has complete understanding of its genetic information, it re-engineers itself for survival. the stropharia cubensis mushrooms version of re-engineering is a mystical network strategy when in contact with planatary sufaces and a spore-dispurtion strategy as a means of radiating throughout the galaxy. and, though i am troubled by how freely Bell's nonlocality theorem is tossed around, nevertheless the alien intellect on the other side does seem to be in possesion of a huge body of information drawn from the history of the galaxy. it/they say that there is nothing unusual about this, that humanitys conceptions of organized intelligence and the dispersion of life in the galaxy are hopelessly culture-bound, that the galaxy has been an organized society for millions of years. life evolves under so many different regimens of chemistry, temperature and pressure, that searching for an extraterrestrial who will sit down and have a conversation with you is doomed to failure. the main problem with searching for extraterrestrials is to recognize them. time is so vast and evolutionary strategies and enviorments so varied that the trick is to know that contact is being made at all. the stropharia cubensis mushroom, if one can believe what it says in one of its moods, is a symbiote, and it desires ever-deeper symbiosis with the human species. it achieved symbiosis with human society early by associating itself with the domesticaed cattle and through them human nomads. liek the plants men and women grew and the animals they husbanded, the mushroom was able to inculcate itself into the human family, so that where human genes these other genes were carried.

 

but the classic mushroom cults of mexico were destroyed by the spanish conquistadors. the franciscans assumed they had an absolute monopoly on theophagy, the eating of God; yet in the new world they came upon people calling a mushroom teonanacati, the flesh of the gods. they set to work, and the inquisition was able to push the old religion into the mountains of Oaxaca so taht it only survived in a few villages when Valentina and Gordon Wasson found it there inthe 1950's."

 

there is another metaphor. one must balance these explaination. now i shall sound as if i do not think the mushroom is an extraterrestrial. it may instead be what i have recently come to suspect- that the human soul is so alienated from us in our present culture that we treat it as an extraterrestrial. to us the most alien thing in the cosmos is the human soul. aliens hollywood-style could arrive at earth tommrow and the DMT trance would remain more weird and continue to to hold more promise for useful information regarding the human future. it is that intense. ignorance forced the mushroom cult into hiding. ignorance burned the libraries of the Hellenistic world at an earlier period and dispersed the ancient knowlege, shattering the stellar and astronomical machinery that had been the work of centuries. by ignorence i mean the Hellenistic-Christian-Judaic Tradition. the inheritors of this tradition built a triumph of mechanism. it was they who later realized the alchemical dreams of the 15th and 16th centuries- and the 20th century- with the transformation of elements and the discovery of gene transplants. but then, having conqured the New World and driven its people into cultural fragmentation and diaspora, they cam unexpectedly upon the body of osiris- the condensed body of Eros- in the mountains of mexico where Eros had retreated at the coming of the Christos. and by finding the mushroom, they unleashed it.

 

history is a shockwave of eschatology. something is at the end of time and is casting a huge shadow over human history, drawing all human beings toward it. all wars, all philosophies, the rapes, the pillages, the migrations, the cities, the civilizations- all of this is occupying a microsecond of geological, planetary and galactic timeas the monkeys react to the symbiote, which is the enviorment and which is feeding information to humanity about the larger picture. i do not beling to the school that wants to attribute all of our accomplishments to knowlege given to us by friendly aliens- i am describing something i hope is more profound than that. as nervous systems evolve to higher and higher levels, they come more and more to understand the true situation in which they are embedded is an organism, an organization of intelligence on a galactic scale. science and mathematics may be culture-bound. we cannot know for sure, because we have never delt with an alien mathematics or an alien culture except in the occult relm, and aht evidence is inadmissable by the guardians of scientific truth. this means that the contents of shamanic experience and of planet-induced ecstasies are inadmissable even through they are the source of nevelty and the cutting edge of ingression of the novel into the plenum being.

 

think about this for a moment: if the human mind does not loom large in the coming history of the human race, then what is to become of us? the future is bound to be psychedelic, becuase the future belongs to the mind. we are just beginning to push the buttons of the mind. once we take a serious enginerring approach to this , we are going to discover the plasicity, the mutability, the eternal nature of the mind and, i belive, release it from the monkey.

 

McKenna: "my vision for the final human future is an effort to exteriorize the soul and internalize the body, so taht the exterior soul will exist as a superconducting lens of translinguistic matter generated out of the body of each of us at a critical juncture at our psychedelic bar mitzvah."

 

other intelligent monkeys have walked the earth. we exterminated them so now we are unique, but what is loose on the planet is language, self-replicating information systems that reflect functions of DNA: learning, coding, templating, recording, testing, retesting, recoding against DNA fuctions. then again, language may be a quality of an entirely different order. whatever language is, it is in us monkeys now and moving through us and moving out of our hands and into the noosphere with which we have surrounded ourselves.

 

teh tryptamine state seems to be in one sense transtemporal; it is an anticipation of the future, it is as though Plato's metaphor weer true- time IS the moving image of eternity. the tryptamine ecstasy is a stepping out of the moving image into eternity, the eternity of the standing now, the nunc sans of Thomas Aquinas. in that state, all of human history is seen to lead toward the culminating moment. acceleration is visible in all the processes around us: the fact taht fire was discovered several million years ago; language came perhaps 35, 000 years ago; measurement: 5,000; Galileo, 400; then watson-crick and DNA. what is obviously happening is taht everything is being drawn together.

 

T. McKenna:

 

"what the mushroom says about itself is this: that it is an exterrestrial organism, taht spores can survive the conditions of intersteller space. they are deep, deep purple- the color taht they would have to be in order to absorb deep ultraviolet end of the spectrum. the casing of a spore is one of the hardest organic substances known. the electron density approaches that of metal"

 

the mushroom states its position very clearly. it says "i require the nervous system of a mammal. do you have one handy?".

 

here is what WIKI has to say about the stoned ape theory:

 

Perhaps the most intriguing of Terence McKenna's theories and observations is his explanation for the origin of the human mind and culture. McKenna theorizes that as the North African jungles receded toward the end of the most recent ice age, giving way to grasslands, a branch of our tree-dwelling primate ancestors left the branches and took up a life out in the open—following around herds of ungulates, nibbling what they could along the way.

 

Among the new items in their diet were psilocybin-containing mushrooms growing in the dung of these ungulate herds. The psilocybin -- which in small doses provides an increased visual acuity, in slightly larger doses a physical sexual arousal and in still larger doses full-on ecstatic hallucinations and glossolalia -- gave evolutionary advantages including the rearing of off-spring to reproductive age amongst those tribes who partook of it. The changes caused by the introduction of this drug to the primate diet were many—McKenna theorizes, for instance, that synesthesia (the blurring of boundaries between the senses) caused by psilocybin led to the development of spoken language: the ability to form pictures in another person's mind through the use of vocal sounds.

 

About 12,000 years ago, further climate changes removed the mushroom from the human diet, resulting in a new set of profound changes in our species as we reverted to pre-mushroomed and brutal primate social structures that had been modified and/or repressed by frequent consumption of psilocybin.

 

McKenna's theory has intuitive strength, but it is necessarily based on a great deal of supposition interpolating between the few fragmentary facts we know about hominid and early human history. In addition, because McKenna (who describes himself as "an explorer, not a scientist") is also a proponent of much wilder suppositions, such as his "Timewave Zero" theory, his more reasonable theories are usually disregarded by the very scientists whose informed criticism is crucial for their development.

 

i like that this thread has been started. sorry if i got a little bit off-topic.:hihi:

[Michaelangelica]

A lot of interesting stuff to digest

Thanks.

 

This was something I read yesterday that surprised me.

It might interest you

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/allinthemind/stories/2006/1689941.htm

Hearing Voices - the invisible intruders

 

Listen Now - 22072006 |� Download Audio - 22072006

 

Around 10% of the population hear voices that aren't there. Some people can live harmoniously with them, but for those whose voices are associated with a psychiatric illness, they can be frightening and menacingly real. We discuss the latest research on how auditory hallucinations occur in the brain, what it's like to live with voices in your head - and the healing power of the international Hearing Voices Network.

[Tarantism]

i certainly hear many voices, sometimes they tell me interesting things, sometimes its just random. i dunno, it could be really bad.