About Nature & Psychedelics
You are part of a vast interconnected living system, and you evolved with the capacity to connect deeply with and learn from this living system.
As powerful tools for self-discovery, personal and spiritual growth, and healing, for learning more about the vast potentialities and mechanisms of the human mind, as means to enhancing mental effectiveness and creativity, and as educational aids which help people know themselves in more integrated perspectives, psychedelics hold great promise for addressing the problems that threaten human wellbeing, life and habitat.
Alienation from nature and the loss of the experience of being part of the living creation is the greatest tragedy of our materialistic era. I therefore attribute absolute highest importance to consciousness change, and I regard psychedelic as catalysts for this.
— Albert Hofmann
The Psygaia Hypothesis
The symbiotic relationship between humanity and psychedelic-containing organisms weaves a thread of equilibrium, nurturing not only the human organism but the entire planet. In this dance of reciprocity, the health of humanity becomes entwined with the health of the Earth itself, as we learn to care for ourselves and the environment cradling us through ancient wisdom.
The Psygaia hypothesis builds upon the principles of Gaia theory, suggesting that the Earth forms a complex and self-regulating system and that the felt-sense of connection and unity commonly experienced through psychedelic substances has evolutionary and ecological advantages for all lifeforms, including the planet as a whole.
The Psygaia hypothesis proposes certain psychedelic compounds found in ancient and intelligent organisms facilitate and enhance the human organism’s sense of connection to and unity with the planet and cosmos. Accordingly, psychedelic experiences induced by substances like psilocybin in mushrooms, DMT in ayahuasca or mescaline in peyote offer humans, fungi, plants, other lifeforms and the entire planet an evolutionary and ecological advantage by reliably altering human perception and behaviour in ways that are harmonious with, support, and maintain life on Earth.
Psychedelics facilitate wholeness via symbiosis. They invite us into realms of universal significance, where peak experiences are gateways to evolutionary wisdom. Psychedelics gift us with perceptions that honour the interdependent tapestry of life, aligning us with the evolutionary and ecological harmony of our home.
By facilitating awareness of planetary consciousness and promoting greater understanding and appreciation of the interdependence, unity and sacredness of all life through mystical experience, ecological awareness, and evolutionary intelligence, psychedelics inspire and motivate the human to act in ways that are harmonious with the planet and cosmos.
Across time, ancient cultures and scientific inquiry alike have uncovered the many ways in which psychedelics can nurture spiritual insight, pro-social and pro-environmental behaviour, as well as improved psychological functioning and wellbeing. Furthermore, the mystical experiences psychedelics occasion are most often characterized by insight into cosmic unity and interconnection. By feeling at one with the Earth and cosmos, and recognizing the transcendent significance, or sacredness, of all existence, humanity has a greater chance of perceiving and behaving in ways that are harmonious with itself and the entire planetary system the human organism is a part of.
Psychedelics unravel life as a web of oneness and interconnectedness. This visceral understanding is a beacon guiding our choices and actions, propelling us toward greater harmony with ourselves, each other, and all of life. By honoring the transcendent significance of all existence and recognizing our unity with the Earth and cosmos, we align our thoughts and deeds with the symphony of the planetary system we call home.
Nature is alive and speaking to us.
This is not a metaphor.
— Terence McKenna
A Mycelium Network
A mushroom is the fruit body of mycelium, a large underground network interconnecting the roots of all plants in the Earth’s soil, sending nutrients, electric and chemical signals between plants.
Mycelium is essential in sustaining life on planet Earth. About 90% of plants have a symbiotic relationship with mycelium, and most plants could not live without this intelligent and living mycelium network. Mycelium decomposes organic material and breaks it down to send nutrients throughout the biosphere, sustaining and perpetuating life on Earth. It is through such a complex living network that psilocybin, the active psychedelic ingredient in magic mushrooms, exists.
Mycelium is the essential foundation for complex life on planet Earth. Humans depend on mycelium.
The animal kingdom diverged evolutionarily from a branch of fungi about six hundred billion years ago, and mycelium set the soil on the planet which permitted plants to grow. Thus, without mycelium, life on Earth is improbable.
The entire animal kingdom has a rich symbiotic relationship with mushrooms, or fungi. Fungi not only grows on the planet, but also on animal bodies, including human bodies. This symbiotic relationship allows the animals and fungi to sustain themselves by supporting one another’s biological needs.
Seeking to change consciousness is also a natural and adaptive animal behaviour. Most animals, including bees, deer, and humans, purposely seek to alter consciousness with plants and fungi. The instinct to change consciousness is vital to evolution, like animal needs for water, food and sex. Consciousness change can thus be considered a biological norm for animals, including human beings.
Psilocybin mushrooms emerge out of evolutionary symbiosis, a product of an intelligent living system which sustains and perpetuates biological life.
Psychedelics allow to rediscover wholeness in symbiosis.
— Louis Belleau
Natural Connection
Humanity is facing a crisis of disconnection.
The rise in poor human health and unsustainable behaviours towards the environment threaten the survival of the human species and the preservation of a planetary habitat. Humans have severed themselves from their biological source of connection to the planet by prohibiting psychedelics.
A relationship to ancient and intelligent psychedelic-containing plants and fungi seems to be necessary for the regulation of human and ecological health.
The absence of a culturally supported relationship to nature and lack of socially sanctioned access to expanded consciousness causes narrow perspectives and rigid ideologies that threaten the planet and the lives of many people.
Disconnection from nature has led to unsustainable socioeconomic incentives to produce and consume which continue to take precedent over the health of our species and the sustainability of a home planet.
By dissolving psychological boundaries through expanded consciousness, psychedelics can help human beings reach healthy self-transcendence.
On a psychological and individual level, the toll for our lack of connection to nature leads to deeply unfulfilling, alienating, and impoverished ways of life. This is seen in the rapidly growing mental health epidemic: widespread emotional and psychosomatic disorders such as anxiety, addiction depression and suicide.
On an ecological and social level, the lack of sanctioned access to expanded consciousness leads to strategies of existence that threaten the survival of all life on Earth. Our disconnection from nature results in intolerance, discrimination, violence and ecocide due to egocentric perspectives and ideologies.
Our reconnection to nature through the effective use of psychedelics may be essential to the survival and evolution of the human species.
All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do.
— Mahatma Gandhi
An Ancient Solution
Psychedelics are ancient tools that offer the beginning of a solution to modern problems.
Throughout human history and around the planet, human beings have used psychedelics as medicine and sacrament for their unique capacity to reliably produce expanded consciousness and spiritual experience, features of human experience which facilitate insight, meaning, healing, growth and transformation.
Data shows that using psychedelics increases peoples sense of connection to Nature, and other data shows that connection to Nature is healthy.
Psychedelics bring people closer to nature through the ego-dissolving and consciousness expanding properties of the psychedelic experience. Psychedelics gives rise to a biologically innate therapeutic mechanism in consciousness which ultimately can cause improved psychological functioning and personal wellbeing.
By expanding consciousness and dissolving egocentric boundaries, an individual is exposed to more interconnected and integrated perspectives, deepening the human’s personal sense of connection to all nature via temporary alterations in brain activity, specifically reduction in activity of the DMN.
Psychedelics can be a source of healing and growth if used effectively by increasing access to normally unconscious evolutionary intelligence.
By reconnecting to the evolutionary intelligence that is innate to human biology, we rediscover a source of intelligence that may help our species heal and grow. The human species is polluting and destroying the foundation of the soils of the ecosystem that has given humanity birth and will sustain future generations, it is of crucial that we reconnect to and learn from the nature that birthed us.
Psychedelic occasion direct experiential insight into the interconnectivity and unity of the cosmos, permitting for a deepened sense of connection to life and a transcendent sense of meaning.
Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Healing & Growth
Humanity can heal and grow by addressing our various problems within and outside our selves.
The sociocultural and socioeconomic systems in which people currently participate continue to contain the source of the ills which people increasingly seek to heal by using psychedelics in therapeutic contexts. Thus, the genuine healing and growth of our planet and species requires political and social change.
Psychedelics alone are not the solution to any of humankind’s psychological, social and ecological problems. They are only the beginning, a sowing of seeds to a multigenerational process of healing, social transformation, & ecological regeneration.
As medicine for our growing mental health crisis and as sacrament for our deepening sense of disconnection, psychedelics may contribute to the healing of people and the planet. Used responsibly through a synthesis of knowledge, with an attitude of humility and reverence, psychedelics can reconnect individuals and communities to Nature, a primordial source of healing and growth.
Addressing the many roots of our individual and collective ills will involve learning, as communities and as individuals, to effectively utilize the positive potential of psychedelics to transform how we perceive, behave towards, and relate to ourselves, one another, the planet, and the cosmos.
The major problems in the world are the result of the difference between how nature works and the way people think.
— Gregory Bateson
Psychedelics are helpful insofar as our relationship to them facilitates positive change.
People are free to use psychedelics as they please.
However, psychedelics can be used for positive individual and collective transformation through a natural and sacred process of healing and growth.
Welcome to How to Use Psychedelics.
A Psygaia project.
You are a divine being. You matter, you count. You come from realms of unimaginable power and light, and you will return to those realms.
— Terence McKenna
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