In my book ‘The Infinite Mindfield’ I have a section on how the ‘plants’ seemed to have informed the Amazonian shamans how to select the two plants, out of the many thousands of species in the Amazonian jungles, that could work together to create the entheogenic brew known as ayahuasca. In simple terms one of the plant contains a substance that facilitates the effective ingestion into the bloodstream of the Dimethyltriptamine contained in the other.
Anthropologists have long been puzzled as to how the indigenous medicine men, with seemingly no knowledge of chemical processes, found exactly the right plants to create altered-states of consciousness. When asked how they knew which plants to select the shamans explained that during their own, self-induced, ‘shamanic journeys’ they had encountered entities that seemed to have plant and serpent-like attributes and these entities told them that they needed to seek out two specific plants in order to allow non-shamans access to alternate realities. The two plants in question are banisteriopsis caapi and psychotria viridis.
As I state in the book this suggests that the plants themselves assisted in their ‘discovery’ as a powerful psychtropic substances … but only when mixed together. Does this suggest that the plants really communicated …. that plants have a form of intelligence? Or does it suggest that the ‘serpent/plant’ entities were role-playing to make their existence understandable to representatives of a jungle-based society?
In the book I suggest (as has anthropologist Jeremy Narby) that the actual source of this information is DNA itself, the clue being the regular ‘twin snake’ motif described by ayahuasca ‘experiencers’. Indeed materialist-reductionists will argue that the idea that plants have any form of cognitive powers to be utterly ridiculous. As plants do not have brains, or anything vaguely like a brain and that without a brain mental processing of any sort (let alone rational, intelligent, self-referential thought) is impossible. However in the 1960’s the findings of botanist Cleve Baxter suggested that plants may have memories even though they have no brains.
If true this suggests that maybe consciousness exists as a field surrounding us and depending upon the sophistication of the ‘tuner’ (the brain for example) will depend on how well the signal is received. If this was the case then maybe individual neurons or even plant cells can show limited levels of consciousness. Well hold onto your hat ….. a researcher at the University of Western Australia (a Real Scientist!) called Dr. Monica Gagliano has discovered that the plant mimosa pudica actually learns from experience and therefore show that these plants have a form of memory. But plants lack brains and neural tissues? So where is this information being stored? It could be in calcium-based signalling networks (clearly NOT brains). So is this evidence that consciousness, both rudimentary or sophisticated, may exist outside of the body (plant or animal)?
An article about this can be found by following this link:
http://www.news.uwa.edu.au/201401156399/research/move-over-elephants-mimosas-have-memories-too
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