As a westerner, I must confess, I never took the idea of talking to plants/trees seriously.

However shamans from the Amazon claim "the plants" taught them how to brew Ayahuasca. Given the complexity of making the brew, it's challenging to see how random chance eventually led Amazonian tribes towards the right combination of DMT + MAOI plants.

So I'm opening my normally closed Western perspective a bit as I wonder...is it truly possible to communicate with plants?

I took a walk through the woods recently and tried to conduct an experiment. I touched a tree and tried to communicate with it by sending my thoughts. Unfortunately, I received no discernible response. No emotional or visceral downloads (which I've had before via psychoactive mushrooms).

Is it possible to communicate with plants, and if so how do I initiate communication?

My apologies to anyone who thinks this is a foolish question...

It's far from a foolish question!

Maybe try some changa before repeating your experiment, and see if something happens...

There is a reason why Western/modern thought often dismisses this idea of communicating with plants. When you say "I communicate with plants", what they hear is "I'm delusional and I talk to plants and think they talk back." They are restricted to the idea that communicating means speaking, i.e. with a physical voice. Communication is key to any relationship. Having intimate experiences with plant-based entheogens IS communicating with plants. When you take it, the plant is showing you something else. Much like in a conversation with a person, they will speak about their thoughts, and take you through a journey of their perspective. They are showing you something else. It just so happens that entheogens show you something else in a much more vivid way, compared to someone talking about it.

I think that is the true meaning of communicating with plants. If someone were literally talking to plants, like walking up to a tree and asking how their day was, I would wonder why they're doing that.

So to answer your question of "Can I learn to talk to plants". It's not like an actual language, like Latin or Greek. Language is not bound to written and spoken forms. That's the nature of pure linguistics. It's purely experiencing the neurological cascades that induce things we call thoughts. Plants can do that too (inducing those cascades, not actually experiencing it themselves. Or so we know at the current state), except we ingest them instead of using our voices. That's my 2c.

What kind of communication do you mean? Talking about the weather or other personal belongings? This requires a self represenation of the plant, an instance which reflects its experience as plant, and a channel to communicate. To me, plants, mushrooms and other animals appear as lifeforms which are present in the now, they do not quest, they simply are. Additionally, there seems to be a lot of communication going on between all plants, mushrooms and animals, which result in a big interconnectivity. Paul Stamet observes, that mushroom-networks often function as communication-networks between different plants, like long distance glas-fibre.

I am open to experience and learn from plants, mushrooms and animals by observing and living together with them (and even eating them ), like I get to know a friend.




Why do you apologize? Do you think your question is foolish?

Instead, what is your theory about communication with plants? What is your intention behind this topic?

love, tseuq


I just saw your posting and totally agree with ...

You can talk all you want.. Not sure if they'll answer the way you want, though

Just treat plants well, respect them, help them reproduce by spreading their seeds, water them, look at them grow. I think that's already plenty of communication

The ways plants talk to me- Some tree's leaves will turn inside out when they think it will rain. The appearance of certain plants will tell me my soil conditions. The apple buds in the spring tell me how long of a summer I should expect. Moss can help identify north. Wild strawberries tell me where is a good place to start a new garden by magically appearing out of thin air. Some herbalists say when a plant suddenly appears in your environment it means you need it in some way-the plants come to you if you can imagine. Living on a pharm-I do see this and the more I "listen" the more I can "hear"

Now add dmt, lsd or mushrooms and then the plants really talk! I will swear to this day that tree's pointed me back to camp after getting lost in the woods on lsd-like physical pointing/waviing. Plants have smiled and laughed at me upon the come up of dmt

I have had the same thoughts myself which led on to me thinking that we communicate with plants by consuming them. Does it mean that everytime i eat a bacon sandwich i am communicating with pigs? It seems like a bit of a one way conversation to me.

I've had some very mysterious interactions with plants and nature while exploring the spice realms.

It feels more like opening yourself up to receiving in some way. Its like tuning a radio in a sense.
there seems to be a "nature" frequency you can dial in under the right circumstances.

Its not anything you would expect almost feels like telepathic suggestion coming from nature.
mushrooms are great for tapping into this.

The oldest way and most traditional way of drinking Ayahuasca is to drink just the vine itself with water. Eventually the discovered adding chacruna or chaliponga made the visions stronger, but that was later. Ayahuasca works great without DMT, so there is no mystery here. The McKenna brothers made up this weird idea because they were too obsessed with DMT to realize that DMT isnt necessary for the brew.

So that mystery is easily solved.

BTW - most tribes claim tobacco eventually told them to mix these two plants in a single brew though.


I practice Amazonian style dieta - you eat nothing but fish, rice, potato, and green bananas while each day ingesting the plant you want to connect with. Usually you spend at least a few weeks with a single plant, but a few months is better. With dieta any plant becomes psychedelic and will start talking to you. You have to be really committed to do this though - for example, my next "10 day dieta" will include 47 days of dieting.... A week dieting in preparation, 10 days dieting the plant in isolation with 5 Ayahuasca ceremonies, and then another month dieting afterward to let the plant "grow roots" in my body. No sex the entire time, which is difficult for a married man like myself.... And this is considered a very short diet BTW!!!

I will say that plants talk to me, but I had to learn how to listen.... Wasn't easy - took a lot of work, because our culture is so conditioned to the belief that plants cant communicate, or that people cant communicate with spirits.... Thats a lot of brainwashing to overcome.

There are some aspects of plants that do not have word-based explanations but we do perceive them: when new vines are able to figure out exactly where to go.

The idea of the "quantum universe" that is based on the capacity to observe then would be brought into play; does the consciousness that plants experience on a quantum level come before some or all of what we experience as consciousness? do their observations create reality much more than ours, leading to unique symbiotic and sometimes chaotic interactions?

i wrote a more complicated list but it seems that
it could also be as simple as

consciousnes of molecular lifeforms * ---> consciousness of genetically woven lifeforms of the plant type ---> consciousness of genetically woven lifeforms of other types

(eg if what molecules actually are is very conscious, which seems to be true, their bodies may be comprised of the sum of every molecule of whatever actually determines their types... eg, if hydrogen and oxygen are actually the same molecule but different genders etc)

As already mentioned, with basic, attentive care, most plants will remain quite happy. I personally enjoy sitting with baby plants until they develop more mature roots. I see that part more as a relationship aspect, but certainly isn't necessary. Harvesting plants is rewarding and they give back with respect given to them. That seems like enough vital communication to me.

I've been reading one good book on this subject, Plant Spirit Shamanism by Ross Heaven & Howard Charing.

It starts by pointing out the differences between the 'Western' mentality of plants as biochemical machines vs the animist tradition. There's a lot of interesting and useful techniques from various cultures on using plants for divination. I just started reading the chapter on entheogens, most of that information is common knowledge in our circle, but there's interviews with shamans and such.

If you're sensitive, patient, and poetically minded, I'm sure you'll find the ways plants can give you information. The first step for me was seeing that plant psychedelics will give very specific and informative visions. The plants talked to me first that way.

Has anyone else read Black Elk? I remember one part where he's talking to the peyote plants, not that he eats them, but they talk to him the same way the other spirits do.

offtopic:



Maybe all of the pigs information is processed into and by your system. My turn is affected by everything I supply to myself.




I experience infinte layers of reality, each one reflecting truth but is never truth on its own.

tseuq

It's more like the pig is unwillingly and unwittingly communicating with you. Or at least, the essence of the pig, not the conscious pig itself. Which is why harvesting plants is different. People take what's already dead or harvest off the plant without killing it.

My whole idea of plants talking to us comes from what neurological processes the consumption of the plant induces. In other words, a plant makes me high as shit, so they're talking to me, on a neurological level.

I dont think its possible for them to talk back unless you're insane. However I find that when I talk to trees they give off energy and that energy can guide you. Try and use your instincts brother.