Thread: Insight - How can a drug teach?

Originally Posted by Taosaur

Having tripped or even having achieved a strong cannabis high may well broaden one's perspective. These substances introduce stutters and hiccups into our perceptual processes which can make the processes themselves visible, delivering the basic realization that much of what we take for reality, both personally and collectively as a society and sentient race, is a construction of our own minds. Beyond this initiatory revelation, however--what we might call 'a glimpse of the road'--these substances offer rapidly diminishing returns. Pursuing the sensation of insight they provide is more likely to leave one sitting where the road turns off, or else far out in the weeds, than actually advance one's understanding.

Very well said, and pretty much what I was going to touch on.

Originally Posted by Dthoughts

These plant teachers work because they are consious. Mushrooms don't have eyes or anything that's why they need a mammal host for them to experience consiousness. But once you eat them you can be sure there's a sentient being inside of you. That's why mushrooms have the ability to play games with ur mind and they have a sense of humor. It's because they are alive! And they are single organism on earth that is most in tune with the earth itself. They feed off of dead matter. When you let fungi grow on trash within weeks the trash is gone and it will be replaces by grass and flowers. They are the ultimate recyclists. But they need mammals to cultivate them. In exchange they will give us wisdom and help us in our evolution.

I've got to interject on this, too. As someone who has previously made cases for even blades of grass possibly having 'consciousness', I do think it's another thing entirely to actually place faith in such an idea. To assume and/or state as fact that mushrooms being 'alive' (once) means that they are still 'alive' and conscious inside of you is a very very bold claim. It is not a new one, of course, since many cannibalistic cultures through history have believed in the idea of dead flesh from a human giving said human's physical and mental attributes to its consumer, through an assimilation of that human's 'essence.' Do you believe that as well?

There is a lot that still needs to be done to prove that a simple, fungal organism - such as a mushroom - actually experiences consciousness, as opposed to a purely functional (practically mechanical) existence. If you're going to use the concept in a discussion about the physiology and psychology of the human mind, you'll have a hard time finding much credible reference to back the idea. Not to say it isn't possible in nature. I, myself, see it as a possibility. But, it's a hard pill to swallow, for some.

[Edit:]
Ah, and after reading the last couple of posts, I see now the real issue being with the difference between 'taking on the residual effects' of something, and that something actually being 'conscious', in and of itself.