I'm curious about "co-authorship" in the art of alchemy. So, human beings have the capacity to transform the material world for good or ill - like staple crops being cultivated over millennia, vs those same crops then being transformed rapidly with genetic alteration until they can no longer fit into any natural ecosystem. The latter process is driven purely by human will and ego, but I wonder if you agree that the former is informed by a cooperative effort by human and plant consciousness. Similarly, the alchemical process of liberating the psychedelic substances from plant matter is often described mythologically as being messaged to human beings from the plant consciousness, whereas LSD seems somewhat incidental, and purely synthetic psychedelics are driven by a worldview of material re/production. Ultimately, even if synthetic psychedelics have the same effect as naturally occurring ones, they similarly don't fit into any "ecosystem" because - it seems to me - they go against nature without the crucial aspect of being governed by natural law, so their production, byproducts, and distribution all necessarily incur an environmental cost without participating in a healthy web of living organisms... I don't know if this means they aren't valuable substances, but I can't see how they can form a sustainable bridge between humanity and greater-than-human consciousness if their creation does not come from a collaboration between humans and other conscious entities. Wondering what you think?
Paul, thank you for reading and for your thoughtful comment! You raise many important issues regarding the human-plant relationship. In my view, the human being is inextricable from the plant world and has structurally developed from it. I am reminded of this quote from my spiritual teacher, Adi Da:
"The plant form, or the plant structure, is the basic form that all other forms share. You can observe the tree in the midst of the human body. The root of the human body is a plant. The trees became humankind and every other kind of being. Mysteriously, this is so. The plant is the fundamental structure—you see the same structure in the tree and fundamentally in any form of vegetation."
He goes on to liken the spinal process with the uprightness and rootedness of the tree. Basically, the human being is an evolution of the tree-structure in mobile form. This means we are not only in relationship to nature, we are nature becoming conscious of itself.
Our opposable thumbs give us the gift of cultivation, of grasping and creating. As I see it, the human being has a Promethean purpose, to "steal the fire" and bring its transformative light into the world. We cook food to pre-digest it and make its nutrition available, and we've done this long before there was any sophisticated knowledge about it. The human relationship to fire represents the fundamental impulse of transformation.
Now, fire is also destructive. It can devastate the natural world instead of transforming it. As you point out, our "co-authorship" needs to feed the ecosystem we are part of, but this happens on many levels. I think its impossible to avoid the connotation of "intervention", because even medicine is formed on this basis--to intervene and support a natural process that needs catalyzing. Nature does the healing and we are its instruments.
Synthetic psychedelics represent a mysterious intersection of technology and medicine. To understand their function, we need to take a deeper look at chemistry as alchemy. As Hofmann pointed out, materialism is a limited view, even in the context of chemistry. We need a chemistry and medicine based on natural laws. Also, most purely "synthetic" substances have natural precursors. Instead of replacing nature through synthesis, we should consider how we can be cultivators who bring out the essence of nature's gifts. This is all ultimately excellent food for thought!
I'm curious about "co-authorship" in the art of alchemy. So, human beings have the capacity to transform the material world for good or ill - like staple crops being cultivated over millennia, vs those same crops then being transformed rapidly with genetic alteration until they can no longer fit into any natural ecosystem. The latter process is driven purely by human will and ego, but I wonder if you agree that the former is informed by a cooperative effort by human and plant consciousness. Similarly, the alchemical process of liberating the psychedelic substances from plant matter is often described mythologically as being messaged to human beings from the plant consciousness, whereas LSD seems somewhat incidental, and purely synthetic psychedelics are driven by a worldview of material re/production. Ultimately, even if synthetic psychedelics have the same effect as naturally occurring ones, they similarly don't fit into any "ecosystem" because - it seems to me - they go against nature without the crucial aspect of being governed by natural law, so their production, byproducts, and distribution all necessarily incur an environmental cost without participating in a healthy web of living organisms... I don't know if this means they aren't valuable substances, but I can't see how they can form a sustainable bridge between humanity and greater-than-human consciousness if their creation does not come from a collaboration between humans and other conscious entities. Wondering what you think?
Paul, thank you for reading and for your thoughtful comment! You raise many important issues regarding the human-plant relationship. In my view, the human being is inextricable from the plant world and has structurally developed from it. I am reminded of this quote from my spiritual teacher, Adi Da:
"The plant form, or the plant structure, is the basic form that all other forms share. You can observe the tree in the midst of the human body. The root of the human body is a plant. The trees became humankind and every other kind of being. Mysteriously, this is so. The plant is the fundamental structure—you see the same structure in the tree and fundamentally in any form of vegetation."
He goes on to liken the spinal process with the uprightness and rootedness of the tree. Basically, the human being is an evolution of the tree-structure in mobile form. This means we are not only in relationship to nature, we are nature becoming conscious of itself.
Our opposable thumbs give us the gift of cultivation, of grasping and creating. As I see it, the human being has a Promethean purpose, to "steal the fire" and bring its transformative light into the world. We cook food to pre-digest it and make its nutrition available, and we've done this long before there was any sophisticated knowledge about it. The human relationship to fire represents the fundamental impulse of transformation.
Now, fire is also destructive. It can devastate the natural world instead of transforming it. As you point out, our "co-authorship" needs to feed the ecosystem we are part of, but this happens on many levels. I think its impossible to avoid the connotation of "intervention", because even medicine is formed on this basis--to intervene and support a natural process that needs catalyzing. Nature does the healing and we are its instruments.
Synthetic psychedelics represent a mysterious intersection of technology and medicine. To understand their function, we need to take a deeper look at chemistry as alchemy. As Hofmann pointed out, materialism is a limited view, even in the context of chemistry. We need a chemistry and medicine based on natural laws. Also, most purely "synthetic" substances have natural precursors. Instead of replacing nature through synthesis, we should consider how we can be cultivators who bring out the essence of nature's gifts. This is all ultimately excellent food for thought!