Terence McKenna wrote:
Our method is scientific but our opinions about Stropharia Cubensis are
not. Our opinions in this matter do not rest upon the opinions of others
nor upon anything written in any book, instead they rest upon the
experience of five dried grams of this psilocybin mushroom; at that level a
peculiar phenomenon occurs. It is the emergence of an I-Thou relationship
between the person taking the psilocybin and the mental state it evokes.
Jung calls this "transference" and it was a necessary condition of early
and primitive humanity's relationship to its gods and demons. The
mushroom speaks, and our opinions rest upon what it tells eloquently of
itself in the cool night of the mind:
"I am old, older than thought in your species, which is itself fifty
times older than your history. Though I have been on earth for ages, I am
from the stars. My home is no one planet, for many worlds scattered
through the shining disc of the galaxy have conditions which allow my
spores opportunity for life. The mushroom which you see is the part of my
body given to sex thrills and sun bathing, my true body is a fine network
of fibers growing through the soil. These networks may cover acres and may
have far more connections than the number in a human brain. My mycelial
network is nearly immortal- only the sudden toxification of a planet or
explosion of its parent star can wipe me out. By means impossible to
explain because of certain misconceptions in your model of reality, all my
mycelial networks in the galaxy are in hyperlight communication across
space and time. The mycelial body is as fragile as a spider's web, but the
collective hypermind and memory is a vast historical archive of the career
of evolving intelligence on many worlds in our spiral star swarm. Space,
you see, is a vast ocean to those hardy life forms that have the ability to
reproduce from spores, for spores are covered with the hardest organic
substance known. Across the aeons of time and space drift many spore
forming life-forms in suspended animation for millions of years until
contact is made with a suitable environment. Few such species are minded,
only myself and my recently evolved near relatives have achieved the
hyper-communication mode and memory capacity that makes us leading members
in the community of galactic intelligence. How the hyper-communication
mode operates is a secret which will not be lightly given to humans. But
the means should be obvious: it is the occurence of psilocybin and psilocin
in the biosynthetic pathways of my living body that opens for me and my
symbionts the vision screens to many worlds. You as an individual and Homo
sapiens as a species are on the brink of the formation of a symbiotic
relationship with my genetic material that will eventually carry humanity
and earth into the galactic mainstream of the higher civilizations.
"Since it is not easy for you to recognize other varieties of
intelligence around you, your most advanced theories of politics and
society have advanced only as far as the notion of collectivism. But
beyond the cohesion of the members of a species into a single social
organism there lie richer and even more baroque evolutionary possibilities.
"Symbiosis is one of these. Symbiosis is a relation of mutual dependence
and positive benefits for both of the species involved. Symbiotic
relationships between myself and civilized forms of higher animals have
been established many times and in many places throughout the long ages of
my developement. These relationships have been mutually useful; within my
memory is the knowledge of hyperlight drive ships and how to build them.
I will trade this knowledge for a free ticket to new worlds around suns
younger and more stable than your own. To secure an eternal existence down
the long river of cosmic time, I again and again offer this agreement to
higher beings and thereby have spread throughout the galaxy over the long
millenia. A mycelial network has no organs to move the world, no hands;
but higher animals with manipulative abiities can become partners with the
star knowledge within me and if they act in good faith, return both
themselves and their humble mushroom teacher to the million worlds to which
all citizens of our starswarm are heir."
-Terrence Mckenna