Very interesting thread. Only idea I have to add is that of the "Green Man".

This idea is explored in various sci-fi works and I'm not sure where it originated. But the idea is that as man advances in his knowledge of genetic manipulation and biology he will CHOOSE to become a plant.

Could this be what the psychedelic species are grooming us towards?

Imagine us being the caretaker of the earth and having a VERY small footprint because we all have photosynthetic green skin. We would no longer consume animals OR plants. We could sit in the sun for days or tend to the forest. Nothing would be motivating us to do anything but our natural inclination to aid Gaia in her being and enjoy our life.

Helping animals and plants, cultivating new species, tripping out, frolicking, and possibly no real material culture.

We would live in being, could something like this be the end result of the becoming of evolution and culture?

Just an idea, not my own, that I thought was pertinent to this conversation.

I love the green man concept its beautiful.

jamie wrote:
..single cell plants don't need fungi, and were here a long time ago to begin the transformation of our atmosphere into one which would support oxygen breathing animals..many plants can grow without fungi, though it's true the symbiosis is enormous and crucial..

we could theoretically live without fungi..but not without plants..

at the root level would be the original rock eating bacteria, who only require water (not even light) to survive..

i still think plants (more than fungi or bacteria) have a lot to do with our form and purpose (even if we don't comprehend that purpose)

ancient cultures usually talk of the 'tree of life', as opposed to the mushroom of life..

but, sure, Gaia..the galaxy..the cosmos..
these levels are too vast to really comprehend in bipedal mammalian form..

there wont be any plants here without the fungi..there wont even be soil for plants to grow in without the fungi.

Single cell plants cannot sustain human life..and so many plants that we depend on require micorrhizal fungal to thrive..I dont think there is any way around it. You cant just have plants and animals..it wont work if you dont view the whole ecosystem including fungi..

Fungi are a huge part of what makes the soil, they are a main aspect to the decomposition..fungi in the old growth rainforests are resposible for carrying nutrients over long distances from deciduous trees to coniferous trees growing under the canopy where there is not enough light for the trees to even grow without the fungi to transpot nutrients this way between plant species..researchers tried to grow the trees in greenhouses with the same ammount of light and they die..they found that it was the mycelial networks that allowed the trees to grow under the canopy of the larger trees..without fungi we dont have old growth forest.

Fungi even make water..

They are an essential aspect of the ecosystem and I dont see any way for animal species to exists without fungi.

Humans certainly cannot exist without endogenous symbiosis with fungi such candida albicans..

Mushrooms cults and ancient iconography depicting mushrooms goes way way back into our history as humans..many cultures seem to have been obsessed with mushrooms..the neolithic human they found in the alps was carrying fungi with him to survive that harsh terrain..not plants..

fungi allowed us to carry fire..it was probly one of the first true psychedelics we encountered concidering how much easier it is to eat a mushroom than brew specific plants together..

It is the fungi that are proving now in our time to be our best allies for first defence against the threat of toxic wasteland, oil spills..even nuclear radiation..

fungi can save the planet.

..what i was saying, jamie, is that single celled plants didn't need fungi in order to survive..
the first soil was created by primitive bacteria..algae/bacteria colonies appear about 3 billion years ago..
fungi play a very important role in soil nutrition, but it was bacteria who began this role..

but hey, i'm not a biologist..
i'm simply saying this isn't all the work of fungi..and without bacteria they wouldn't exist..
without plants the oxygen vital to us wouldn't exist..
plants can grow without any fungi (for better or worse), though not without bacteria..

my point is though, that if it is just about the plants(in relation to these tryptamines which is what this thread was about) than someone needs to show us why..

These same tryptamines are found in animals..where there are cults of humans who use tryptamines from toads..they are in fungi, and we can see at this point a mushroom cult that spans the globe and reaches far far back into our past..and tryptamines comming from plants...

This is why to me it is not about the plants..it is about the whole ecosystem. Tryptamines are not just a plant thing, or animal thing, or fungi thing..they seem to be more of a biological organsim thing.

..haha, it's fungus vs plant..

for the sake of friendly debate..

while it's true some fungi contain 4-phosphoroloxy-DMT and related compounds..it would seem that a far greater number of tryptamines, and actual mammalian endogenous compounds, are found in plants (dmt, bufotenine, nmt, harman, pinoline, melatonin, phenethylamine, histamines, spermidines etc) ..

so, that would add weight to Felnik's idea that plants are closer to us..
no?

Being a huge sci-fi geek, I'm aware of this concept. It's something I've been fascinated with since I first came across it and fully understood it. The first time I thought about it was when I read The Lord Of The Rings back in grade school. The Ents, specifically. They were still mobile, but essentially, plants. Shepherds of the forest. Tending to their flocks. It was a very attractive idea

I do agree with jamie. I rarely disagree with him, it seems

I want to know why DMT is found in so many different organisms. What its function is. What role it has played in our development. What role it plays in our environment.

Then I wonder, if it was all explained, if someone figured it all out and taught us about it, that would end the mystery that envelopes it. And part of why I'm so attracted to it is because of that mystery.

Like seeing how a magic trick works, would it spoil the illusion?

at least in christianity, the tree of life wasn't altogether infrequently depicted as a mushroom tree

Infectedstyle, yeah this friend of mine, uses cactus aya and dmt with me, so salvia is not his only psychedelic experience, do you think that that is important in this somehow? When i smoke the salvia it is very consistant and i do and have met this Savlia Princess of which he speaks, but she has never asked me to "help build" and its just very curious and interesting to me that he would have that as a re-ocurring experience.... any thoughts on it?

I went to what I thought was eden with a salvia quid..and there was a goddess women there tending the garden..I was in the garden and she told me that humans true role was as caretakers of gaia. We can help eden grow but right now we destroy much of it.

I also have come to realize that we humans cannot leave for the stars without taking gaia with us..we would need entire intact ecosystems that mirror those on earth in space biomes or something to even survive long term IMO..so if gaia has a spirit does that mean some of that spirit is going to the stars with us?

Or if w4e terraform a planet with everything from earth..and we end up with a planet that has an ecosystem just like earth systems, that is pretty much transplanted from earth, does that mean that planet suddenly has a gaian soul?

I really have no idea. I thought maybe ur friend was meant to help "build" on other psychedelics. But i suppose this is not the case.

His experience does sound very intriguing to me also. But again, i suppose only ur friend has witnessed what is actually being build so it is up to him to figure out the meaning of his own experience. Perhaps asking more questions could help here.

Curious indeed. My friend had an experience on mushrooms in which he endured the suffering of the "earth" itself. He is not familiair with the term Gaia, to him it is simply earth. He claimed it to be a living organism. We are drilling holes in it's body and it hurts. The earth is thus constantly enduring pain.

Superficially, this means unless we bring the entire rock with us. We might not bring much of this spirit with us to the stars. Since the body is the stone. But i don't know. I haven't felt the earth to be aliving organism myself. I have only heared of ideas. I do crave for wisdom in this regard tho. I keep asking to show me the earth is actually alive whenever i take psychedelics. Taking DMT into nature sounds like a good next step!

I don't think anyone is really saying its just about the plants at all, jamie...Just that they play a bigger role than we ordinarily realize

back to the whole gaian mind thing, my impression and experiences have leaned more towards it being something that is made up of the entirety of the earth and everything on/in it..including its 'inanimate' aspects, and not just the living organisms

I don't have any firm ideas or beliefs when it comes to this area. Just speculations, experiences, intuitions, etc..

But its funny to note that i originally thought the idea of inanimate objects/matter itself having some form of consciousness was ridiculous...until i encountered salvia

not to mention that along with that chemistry the human uterus shares some very interesting similarities with the reproductive organs [fruits] of flowering plants

however my intention in that other post was never to say that we are more similar to plants than fungi. Just to hint at the depth of our symbiotic relationship with them- not make it a plants vs fungi show. A lot of times when people are talking generally about plants in a global context like this, they would agree that fungi are included in what they're talking about. Its all seamlessly webbed

I had a thought kind of similar to this while tripping a few months ago.
I started to think about plants. It came to my attention on that particular trip that although humans do not realize it or acknowledge it, plants do communicate & have some sort of consciousness & although they do not get up & move from place to place they are sentient beings. I also thought about the alkaloids (mainly dmt) found in plants which are not found in anything else & it seemed to make perfect sense at the time, that tryptamines may be somehow used for communicating things between plants & humans. What I mean by this is that, when you have a breakthrough & end up in hyperspace, its not another reality, rather your seeing the world as a plant does.

Speaking as a mason and a psychonaut....yeah, Gaian consciousness includes stone. Gaian consciousness has animal, fungal, plant and mineral aspects. Heck, clouds, watch them things. They are part of it too. All the classic elements are, fire air earth water.

About space travel. Excellent point jamie And it gives me a notion--astronauts are going to need to learn permaculture. Planets that we colonize and terraform would have their own mineral composition...When we bring an ecosystem that originated on earth, and place it on a new world, we'd be taking whatever primordial consciousness was already present on that foreign rock and impregnating it with some of the more refined aspects of gaian consciousness. If it took root, we'd be the little helper bees who assist gaia in creating offspring.

Its real life Avatar. Plants help us get spiritually connected through higher conciousness.
Thus enabling us to think deeper than "what do I want to do now" but "what can I do to help eachother on this planet".
I think nature or something sees or senses we are lost. Or maybe we set to find this wisdom plant to teach us what to do.
But it makes sense in a way that we are carriers of plants, from seeds clinging on to our pant leg, to making us see what we need to see in our minds to guide us in life, thus getting planted and multiplying the psychedelic species. Very clever!

Another thought is an object reflects every colour but the colour that sticks is the colour of the object. Maybe we are everything but us. We just see a reflection of us, but are really all other things. Or channels of other things. Like a complex network pod that channels everything through our minds / bodies.

I personally have been worried about hyperspace object and beings getting access through our trips and somehow stepping over to this realm. (I think we talked about that before in another thread.

Sorry I can't be more creative and in tuned with these things. I really wish I could. But life here is very "homely" and not much branching out. But it will happen in time. My ears ring sometimes a lot when I come close to doing DMT. Like it is calling me through tendonitis ringing. Odd thing but it leads me to believe that.
Edit: I am talking about that tendonitis that rings intensely for about 5-15 seconds and then goes away. It can happen any time. But for me it happens a lot when I come closer to thoughts about DMT and planning a time to partake. Like the carrier wave, but it stays on one tone.

I've ha both tedonitis and tinnitus--I believe you are talking about the latter.

Doodazzle - thanks! Tinnitus. Sorry. I have both steady ringing when it's quiet and then the other louder ringing that happens just for a few seconds.
When I was a kid, I imagined it being my ear resetting itself somehow. Strange thing.

Felnik

Eloquently put, this concept resonates with me in a profound way... Plants give us nourishment as well as deep entheogen experiences. Growing, nurturing and journeying with them connects our perspective of consciousness to their speed of existence which seems to ignite an innate awareness within us, which ultimately brings us closer to the true nature of ourselves.


Much Peace and Respect