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Are Plants Conscious?
At work lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about whether or not plants are conscious. Most people you’d ask this question to would I’m sure say no outright. But if you’ve spent much time around plants, looking at them, interacting with them, seeing how they grow - how they behave - I imagine you will be inclined towards taking a bit longer to answer this question.
It’s weird to me that I used to walk through the world not noticing plants ever. I mean, I would now and then notice a beautiful tree or a nice flower or something, but now I see plants everywhere. And I don’t just see them, I see them. I see how healthy they are. I see what kind of maintenance or pruning they probably need. I see what kind of soil they are in, if they look like they need water or are getting too much sun.
And I can only wonder if they see me too.
In fact, I can do more than wonder. I’m sure you hard-science types will scoff until you choke to hear such anecdotal hippy-sounding crap as this, but I’ve become more and more certain that the plants are trying to communicate with me. I’ve kind of mentioned it a little before, but it’s been so consistent and so strong for this past month that I feel like it’s worth mentioning again more distinctly. When I close my eyes, I see plants. Not all the time, mind you. But definitely all day long when I’m at work, and afterwards and many other times as well. And they aren’t just plants, they are luminous plants. I see stems forking off into branches, leaves swirling around into patterns, all kinds of different things like that. And not just the plants I was working with at that moment or during that day either, but often plants I’ve not seen in weeks, or ones that I can’t quite identify.
There’s also been something else happening which I’m sure will cause certain of you to further label me as psychotic, but oh well… Woulda never started this site if I was overly worried about that kind of thing. Anyway, I’ve begun to see things out of the corners of my eyes while I’m outside working with plants. What these things are, necessarily, I’m not sure. But sometimes they seem to appear as a rough outline of a figure, or a strange animal. At first it would startle me and I would hurriedly turn to look at whatever it was, and of course there would be nothing there.
I don’t have the quote, but I think there is a part in the Don Juan books that deals a bit with this phenomenon: where Don Juan is leading Castaneda through some countryside and instructs him to look at a stick or something, and it is Castaneda’s perception of it which forces that shape to become a stick rather than staying within the quantum indeterminate state of being both a stick and a spirit. Something like that. If anybody has the quote handy, please drop it below. With that in mind, I have been training myself to not turn and look at these objects I have been seeing, in the hopes of catching a stray nature spirit at play. So far though I have only been able to condition myself not to fully turn my head. I’m also no longer surprised or freaked out by it when it happens, but I am still darting my eyes, which is enough to dispell the sight.
Or maybe I’m on a wild goose-chase altogether though. If you think that, that’s cool. I happen to not and I’m rather enjoying my time outdoors trying to catch elves. We seem to have taken a significant detour though from our original question of whether or not plants are conscious. Or have we? I think they unequivocally are but it’s not the type of thing I find to be worth sitting down and arguing with someone who is operating from a materialist standpoint. Because, frankly, materialism can’t account for consciousness really at all. We can’t technically prove that we ourselves are conscious at all, from what little I know on the subject. And yet, we seem perfectly happy to limit this unproveable state to ourselves alone.
So what is plant consciousness like? Well, first of all, it doesn’t speak in words. That should be obvious, but when we think of consciousness, we are so stuck on words and symbols. Plants obviously are operating on a whole other time scale - and that’s one of the best things I’ve learned from them: to slow down. To let things go, to let things grow. You can always come back later and remove and re-plant. Moreso than that though, plants seem to me to speak in terms of opportunities. Plants take up as much space as they can, they grow as big as they can, spread as far as they can and become as beautiful as they can. And then they let go where it doesn’t really work out, or they conserve their resources during times of stress and allow outlying limbs to wither. I think this also ties directly into abundance as well. Plants seem to love to give. If you cut off dead heads at the right times of year for certain plants, they will flower again and again. Have you ever seen how many apples come off even a small to midling apple tree? I have. You can fill truckloads with them. I know, because I’ve had to do it.
Is love a type of consciousness? That might be a better question. Is growth conscious? Is the impulse to reach outward and upward towards the Apollonian sun - ultimate symbol of consciousness - itself a conscious act? I couldn’t tell you. If you want to know, go ask some plants. Spend some time caring for, understanding, even struggling with them. Then you tell me where your consciousness ends (assuming you have one - do you?) and theirs begins.
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September 27th, 2006 at 11:35 pm
Semi-related: I’ve gotten really into anthropomorphizing plants at work. I think if you work with them on a regular basis, you start to do it a lot when you talk about them. Certain plants seem really masculine and some seem really feminine. We use words like “skirts” and “crowns” to describe them as well. Simple projection on our part? I certainly don’t think so.
September 29th, 2006 at 10:41 am
The Backster effect, of course, is BS. If plants are conscious, then it’s certainly not in any manner scientists can measure.
But I’m a big fan of David Abram these days, and as he pointed out, we don’t know whether other humans are conscious except through our capacity for empathy, putting ourselves in their place. Our natural inclination is to extend that empathy to everything around us, including plants. Our basic animism needs to be beaten out of us. We need to be trained to “know” that plants aren’t conscious, that animals don’t commuicate with us, and so forth.
So, what does it mean for something else beyond ourselves to be conscious? After all, our own consciousness is the only thing we ever truly know firsthand. So if it’s pure animism, or our perception of something real, who can say? We live inside our own sensual world, and that’s the only reality we’ll ever know. What does a theory about plants not being conscious really matter, when the world we experience first-hand is full of feeling plants and talking animals?
September 29th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
I talk to my bamboo plants. I just gave one away to my aunt and I said good-bye to it as I would say good-bye to a dear friend going away to Finland or Austria.
Hard science types need to relax a little bit and realize the world runs far deeper beyond their intellect. The intellectual capacity of the hard science types are amazing (to say the least) but I swear to the gods they suck up wonder like a blood-thirsty vampire or dust-hungry vacuum cleaner.
I came across http://www.futurehi.net/archives/000636.html (can rocks be conscious?)and there was a comment by Alistair! What a small infinite world! He mentions Colin Wilson. I am a big fan of Wilson, I know he mentions plant awareness in his book Mysteries…which anybody with a vowel in their names should read.
On a side not I am wondering if things make sense again?
September 29th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Yeah David Abram is awesome. I once saw him speak during my brief stint in college and it was incredible. Spell of the Sensuous is also a great book for anyone interested.
Personally, I don’t know enough about the Backster effect to know whether or not it’s BS, but I certainly take the entries on Skepdic with a grain of salt, since they are all written from a place with a rather narrow viewpoint of what is and what isn’t possible. That said though, I think you’re right that science isn’t the tool through which we can measure or understand the consciousness of other beings: empathy is. Get inside plants, and more importantly, let them get inside you. What happens then, I’m still figuring out…
September 29th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
Well, it’s my day off and I have yet to read through all the comments from the week, so things make sense for right now. I’ll go get some breakfast and then come back and we’ll see!
September 29th, 2006 at 12:13 pm
is amazing, is amazing.
I am vegetarian…And I am disgusted at the fact I am eating something conscious.
“We’ve just proved plants are conscious so there’s no point being a vegetarian anymore. It’s just a question of eating conscious animals or conscious plants.”
http://www.vegsource.com/harris/flake.htm
September 29th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Listen: the world does not exist outside us, it exists inside of us. Consider your own field of vision, where are it’s boundaries? ‘Where’ does this image, the FOV, rest? Apply this same inquiry to the rest of your senses, where are the boundaries of this sphere?
The soul is not in the body, the body is in the soul. How do we ‘connect’ with other people, is it solely through our words and gestures? No, it is with the Heart, which does not reside inside the body, but in the core of the soul.
You have been watching the process develop inside your spherical alchemical glass for so many years, that you have forgotten you were somebody else, you have mistaken the development of Nature for your Self.
The mineral life, the vegetative life, and the mineral life are all contained within the human and we relate to them on their own level.
September 29th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Beautifully said Prunes! All of life is spiritual with that point of view!
Makes me think of the Tao when he said “The Kingdom of Heaven is inside you and it is outside”
September 29th, 2006 at 12:28 pm
The character Ellie has a monologue about a similar thing in Jurassic Park. I can’t remember it offhand, but she talks about how plants are seen as merely decoration when they’re actually these agressive, focused, vital creatures . . .
If I can say I know I am conscious, and I know other people are conscious, then I know plants are conscious.
I tend to make friends with plants (trees in particular) wherever I go, or–more to the point–they tend to make friends with me.
Then again, if you are (and I am) of the opinion that the universe is a conscious entity–then everything in it has consciousness, even rocks. The only argument would be to what extent that consciousness is or isn’t manifest in a certain object.
September 29th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
interesting plant story in the news
http://www.nwfdailynews.com/articleArchive/sep2006/parasiticweedsniffs.php
September 29th, 2006 at 1:16 pm
Why be disgusted? That’s the way of life: all life is grounded in death, and all death follows life. Can’t have one without the other. There’s nothing to be disgusted of in it: it’s the very essence of life itself, the ouroboros eating its own tail, the cave bear with its own femur in its mouth, the first philopshical glimmering in humanity’s archaeological record and the foundation of all our spirituality.
September 29th, 2006 at 1:21 pm
Absolutely! Where does the source of this type of disgust really lie?
September 29th, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Well, my cheek is always in my tounge, and everything is usually a laughing matter- even disgust.
But in all honesty, I don’t want to be eaten by a higher life form or a lower life form. So in putting myself in another organism’s shoe I bet a lower life form or a higher life form does not want to be eaten by me.
I am realistic, I know what needs to be done needs to be done, but isn’t there a spiritual realm where nothing needs to be eaten or devoured?
Anyways, I am reminded by Little Shop of Horrors what a hoot that film was.
September 29th, 2006 at 1:54 pm
I’m not sure what consciousness means, but there are a couple of effective ways I’ve experienced to get closer to the inner nature of plants. One is to view speeded-up film of the way they grow. Another is to take mescalin and camp out in Cornwall near Tintagel in early October because you’re down and out, and watch the tall angelica and cow parsley seed heads trumpet their heraldic dignity, and feel the shades of Arthur and Merlin in the sad Celtic mist of twilight. Sorry, I was transported back to 1971 for a minute.
Perhaps what it comes down to is that we and the plants are related, and our DNA proves it.
September 29th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
I think in our culture we’re raised with the notion that humans are somewhat godlike: detached from the world, something separate. In more malevolent forms, we’re destined to rule the world; more benevolent system make us its “stewards,” but we’re never part of it. So we expect to live forever. We don’t want to be part of that flow of life and death; it’s almost something beneath us. Have you considered that that might have something to do with you disgust, Gnomely? You may never have even considered it, but we’re all deeply influenced by ideas we’ve never consciously considered all the time, aren’t we? I wish I could find the source for this quote (I think it was Jefferson), “The hardest thing to talk a man out of is something he was never talking into in the first place.”
September 29th, 2006 at 2:58 pm
It might take 7-15 years of TLC for a tree to notice you, though you have the power to cut that tree down in a few minutes. What plants communicate if one slows down enough to recieve is nothing less than what is labeled ‘mystical experience’ and this does not involve ingesting any entheogens. All that is required is silent physical proximity to plants for some time each day. When I die I hope they plant an Aloe over my grave!
September 29th, 2006 at 4:06 pm
Actually, I think that there are certain types of plants which DO want to be eaten. They seriously want us to enjoy their bounty. Like the book, the Giving Tree - totally spot on.
But I also think, like us, that there are plants which have evolved protective measures to guard against their true purpose in some sense. Like how blackberries have evolved both fruit and horrid thorns. Maybe they have an identity crisis too - like they find it disgusting that other beings would want to eat them. I don’t know that it’s necessarily the case, but I think it might be a useful tool for thinking through your own disgust.
Another way: have you ever considered that ingesting something is not a disgrace to the the thing you’r eating, but an honor? Oral sex comes to mind, for one. But then, maybe that’s why some people have problems with oral sex as well. More realistically though, you could think about how the things that you eat are the things that you want to become, that you want to incorporate their qualities into yourself. And thus there is no dishonor or disgust in it.
Interesting: I just discovered that the word “disgust” comes from the french “gouster” to taste
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=disgust&searchmode=none
September 29th, 2006 at 7:41 pm
I think they are conscious in a way that they don’t know they are. The have a view of the world, a little bit of consciousness has been poured into them, but they don’t have the intellect to make anything of it.
September 30th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
The Backster effect, of course, is BS. If plants are conscious, then it’s certainly not in any manner scientists can measure.
well, therein lies the problem. i believe what you`ve just said is that if science doesn`t recognise or measure it then it`s…….um, BS?
there isn`t much the shaman does which science can measure, but healing occurs nonetheless……….whether it happens in borneo or in surbiton or upper manhattan.
for the shaman all consciousness is intertwined. all we have to do is recognise some pattern in the relationship……..then we are communicating.
if you haven`t walked in the woods and felt held in the boughs and branches then you will rely on science to be your filter.
October 1st, 2006 at 3:53 am
Bear in mind that the blackberry species is older than the human. Small animals that eat the fruit (thus spreading the seeds) are protected from their predators by the thorns. Blackberry says: Eat me. Don’t eat those that eat me.
Pretty much a one-track mind.
One can always dream.
prunes, I’m listening. You’ve said this before and I found it incredibly profound, then promptly forgot it. Thanks for the reminder. This illusion of the exterior is very convincing. In fact (ha!), I could swear I’m typing on a keyboard and responding to you, another human, right now!
Intellect is as intellect does.
alistair, well said.
unthinkable, nobody cares what (you think) you think.
October 1st, 2006 at 2:39 pm
Never thought of it like that and you’re probably right! Blackberries are one serious plant, man.
October 1st, 2006 at 10:04 pm
fruit is held out by the bush to be eaten. it is the way we are part of the reproductive cycle of the plant. the seeds are transported by us to another place via our intestinal tract and deposited elsewhere when we are done with them.
does this make you feel sexy or used? or disgusted? or in awe of the greater mechanism at work?
October 2nd, 2006 at 3:04 pm
No, I’ve said that false claims about science are BS. The Backster effect is the claim that plant consciousness is scientifically measurable. It’s a scientific claim, so it has to stand or fall on the standards of science. All we’ve measured so far is some fairly obvious recording errors and the researcher’s own bias. It’s never been independently verified, and it’s never stood up to anything like a rigorous research method. So it’s not a scientific claim at all–which is what it purports to be.
Now, I do believe that plants are conscious; it’s just one of the whole worlds of valid opinions I think exist beyond the domain of science. But I don’t pretend that these viewpoints are scientific, either.
Absolutely. Indigenous knowledge is a whole other way of knowing—it’s no worse (and no better) than science, but it is different, so calling one the other does a terrible disservice to both, and is generally rooted in our inability to consider anything other than science worthwhile. Notice, for instance, that when I call the notion of plant consciousness “unscientific,” you assume I must mean it doesn’t exist. That’s the kind of leap, rooted in our ethnocentric notions of the superiority of “science,” that we most desperately need to break out of.
October 2nd, 2006 at 9:05 pm
From your work, I would have surmised that you actually think indigenous knowledge systems are superior…?
October 3rd, 2006 at 8:30 am
No, I think they’re equal, which is itself a radical claim in our culture (or any culture, since ethnocentrism is universal). In knowledge, medicine, art, etc., indigenous cultures are our peers; they pull ahead in quality of life, and adapting to human nature (as opposed to making humans adapt to them).