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Psychoactive Plants
Working so intimately with plants this past month has opened my eyes to a lot of things. One of the realizations that is beginning to dawn on me has to do with people’s intense interest in those plants which have marked effects on people’s consciousness: the psychoatcives and their friends.
What I am realizing is this: all plants have the ability to teach you things, but most of us simply won’t listen. Why? Because it takes… the plants… a really… long… long…. time… to… speak. So long that our chattering mammal monkey minds lose track of the pattern and forget that something is even being said. It’s like how a little kid with an exciting story to tell simply can’t wait for his mom to stop talking and constantly interrupts her. Psychoactive plants, then, I think are the plants who operate on a speed that most of us today can recognize as containing meaningful information.
So we have all these people talking about plants like ayahuasca (okay, so it’s made of two plants), the “special effects” plants - the ones that offer a big bang for the buck. And people seem to think that getting involved with the use of these plants re-attunes them to nature, to the spirit world and a bunch of other things. It may well do that for some people, but I’m starting to wonder if relying on the psychoactive “hot shot” plants doesn’t actually serve to further divide us from the simpler, slower signals being broadcast by other plants and aspects of the natural world.
In the first Don Juan book, Don Juan forces Castaneda to spend something like a year (I forget exactly) growing the datura that he is going to be using later on. Castaneda spends precious little time in the book discussing the care and preparation of that plant and mainly focuses the narrative around the psychedelic experiences he achieves using it and other plants. But what if the true lesson to be learned is not contained in (or not exclusively in) the experiences plants like these can afford, but in the actual physical interact, the care and growth cycles of these plants that you attune yourself to? For most people who come to use psychoactive plants like this, an enormously important - perhaps of primary importance - aspect of the true experience is going to be missed.
Or, to use another metaphor most of us may be more familiar with: maybe the real lessons Mr. Miyagi taugh Daniel-San in the Karate Kid were contained within the sweeping and waxing that he had him do, and not in the Crane Kick. It seems to me that most people today are skipping right to the Crane Kick, because it looks cool, and then running around acting like they know what karate is really about.
They don’t. So, if you’re interested in psychoactive plants and their use, you may want to ask yourself a question. Are you hoping that using a plant like this will reconnect you to the natural world and to the spiritual world? It may be that it does, but you have to realize that if those are the things you are looking for, it does not logically follow then that you ought to go out and use these plants for some flash-bang effects. If you want to connect to the natural world, then the logical thing to do would be to, um, connect to the natural world. It sounds simple, but it’s apparently not. It’s taken me a long time to understand this hidden Western immediate-gratification element of our collective interest in psychoactive plants.
And if I never hear another word about ayahuasca, it will be too soon. You want to learn from some wild and far out plants? Check out bindweed. See what it has to teach you about sustainability, about sneaking in and taking over other plants. Or look at the whips sent out by wisteria and figure out how it decides where to go. There’s so much out there ready to teach you, if you’re ready to slow down, shut up and listen.
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October 3rd, 2006 at 5:31 pm
A really important point. Perhaps I’m “out of the loop” in underground media, ayahuasca-wise, but I’m still fascinated by it. I’ve a friend who’s been working with ayahuasqueros in Peru for 6 years or so, and it’s constantly fascinating talking with him about the complexities of the mestizo approach to plants.
What I’ve learned from him that seems most important is that ayahuasca is one node - albeit a frequently valued one - in an astonishingly complex network of interconnected plant teachers in the Amazon. The shaman he worked with thought that Cebolla daselba (”jungle onion”) was more important than ayahuasca for healing, and it has no overt “whizz-bang” effects. Like authentic ayahuasca use, it’s used in conjunction with a strict diet, and its teaching apparently come through in dreams.
Likewise, my friend’s said that the “special effects” of ayahuasca aren’t, in his experience, always the most fruitful. Most important is the cumulative constellation of dream experiences over long periods of working with it, and the cumulative effects of purging.
Another friend has just returned from a course in Peru and has immediately plunged herself into studying the trees here in England. Of course there will be quick-fix vision freaks who miss the wider story, but we shouldn’t let them represent the plants they use. And maybe we’re just judging them by a phase they’re going through…
Not that I’m at all interested in them per se, but could you point a finger regarding these people who have made ayahuasca such a tedious topic for you? Just for context
Even Terence McKenna, a self-confessed vision freak, whenever he got the chance, stated categorically that the best way to approach the psychedelic experience is to grow your own mushrooms. And that if you can do that, the patience, attentiveness and cleanliness required probably qualify you for the experience it grants.
October 3rd, 2006 at 5:41 pm
I’m also curious about your own path. You’ve reached an interesting place (and job!) regarding interacting with plants, but did you get here via experiences with “hot shot” plants? And - while I completely agree with the general point about our quick-fix attitude - might there not also be something amiss, if these visionary experiences were part of what got you to where you are now, to turn to others who may be still on the way, and criticize their use of more “obvious” plant experiences?
It’s a general point I wonder about a lot. How much sage advice is good for where the person hearing it is on their path? Another complication we have to navigate in a society without consensual initiatory paths…
October 3rd, 2006 at 6:57 pm
In another one of the books in the Castaneda collection, I think “The Sorceror’s Crossing” by Taisha Abelar (not Florinda Donner), she has to live in a tree for a while without coming down. When I worked on a farm this summer it was really interesting to hear the farmer talk about what time of the year different plants did things, or what they would be doing. For example, when a tomatoe plant gets a flower, apparently within 48 hours the fruit will start to appear. Don Juan also says somewhere that you can’t stay with trees too long because their energy will take over yours and you get sort of stuck to them like moss or something and its hard to pull away. (My memory’s really hazy so this is coming out not well.) For people familiar with the material, inorganic beings as opposed to organic are supposed to have a longer life span, but they’re slowed way down, because of the interaction with being bombarded by the energy of the universe. That’s why in the books the inorganic beings Castaneda interacts with have scouts to communicate for them. I don’t think trees really have scouts (unless you could think of all of the insects living inside them, or the birds as such…) so their communication is slower. The other problem is that its very unlikely that they would be communicating in the same language as us, so we have to learn their language and how to listen to it. If we don’t know what we’re listening for, it becomes a larger problem of how to learn from them. Someone I know had an experience of a tree giving them a vision of the civil war, so the tree was really old, but it might only be because of the experience of being around humans for so long (and the fact that it was in a graveyard) that it was able to communicate visually in that way. But yeah, the idea of communicating with trees and other plants is pretty fascinating to me.
October 3rd, 2006 at 7:20 pm
I’d be interested in hearing your opinion after you tried one of those entheogenic plants (or fungi—am I correct in recalling that you said you haven’t? Or is that way off?). There are good reasons people won’t shut up about them (there are also good reasons to just shut up about them).
October 3rd, 2006 at 9:04 pm
I would suggest you pick up a copy of “Tripping” by Charles Hayes. I saw a copy down at the bookstore on the 2nd lower level of Pike Place recently.
October 3rd, 2006 at 9:39 pm
Oh, wow! I didn’t know that and I totally agree with him there.
Speaking of mushrooms, I had a dream last night that two friends and I were in a giant house or some other kind of fancy building. And we kept walking through doors in search of mushrooms we knew to be growing there. When we found them, they were actually growing out of this weird nasty moldy carpet. And they were so tiny that I was skeptical this was really them after all. One of my friends told me a lot of people thought that, but that we should just pick them anyway.
We did and they were tiny and white, and some had elaborate designs on their tops as well - which were flat across like discs. We ended up putting them into a jar, and then later on, we realized that the mushrooms had turned into small writhing worms, which my dreaming mind called “nematodes” - which now that I google those, this is more or less exactly what they were, except more “gummy” looking. I again questioned my friend, suggesting that what we’d picked were not the right mushrooms we had been seeking after all, but he assured me they were indeed.
I don’t remember how the dream ended, or if we took these worm/shrooms. But I don’t think we did. Interesting because I had written this post last night probably shortly before going to sleep. I’m not entirely sure how to take that dream. It seems to tell me to wait and be sure, find the right time, the right companions and the right plant/fungus. Maybe that’s not it at all though, but that has been how I have approached the topic up until this time.
October 3rd, 2006 at 9:45 pm
Yes I have been thinking about this all day as well. The only two “hot-shots” I have used were salvia - several years ago, and I dont think I ever “understood” how to use that plant properly, though I did have some interesting experiences with it. And marijuana, which I don’t use very regularly, but which I believe I am beginning to “understand”.
I don’t personally believe that either of these plants brought me to where I am standing with plants today, but neither is it correct to discount them altogether. Which is not my intention whatsoever with this post. I don’t want to tell people not to do these drugs, because - hell - what on earth do I know about what anyone else needs? This post is written as I sort through my own feelings and my own reactions to things others seem to be doing.
I tend to think all of it is specific to where you are on your path but that even if it doesn’t match where you are, that you ought to hear it and integrate it on some level. Even if you don’t need it now, you may later - since as you said, most of us don’t really have well-defined initiatory step-by-step paths.
October 3rd, 2006 at 9:50 pm
Trees absolutely have scouts and I think you nailed it. Why do you think squirrels are so integrated into the lifecycle of the oak? This becomes a very fascinating way of interacting with plants, I think - through the emissaries and the communities of other creatures the plants sustains. Because I have also noticed that each plant itself is essentially an ecosystem. We pulled English ivy off a big rock one time and there were hundreds of potato bugs and spiders - all of which I am sure never knew any other part of this great big world we live in. To them, that rock and ivy was their world if not their total universe.
October 3rd, 2006 at 9:54 pm
Based on an experience I had with a friendly plant teacher (of an admittedly psychoactive variety) recently, I can say that the language we use (or I should say - think we use) is fundamentally the same everywhere. It underlies the structure of reality itself. English and actual objects are outgrowths of it. So I think that working backwards, if you can speak English with great intent and honesty, then you can have a plant know what you mean. Or you can simply touch it, care for it, etc and it will understand you. I do think there is a great issue of speed for us to understand them, and that we also need to realize a lot of the understanding we gain from plants is not in words or flashy symbolism (that all comes from our own minds anyway), but in the understanding that you develop by working around plants. How does a particular plant act? What are its characteristics? What can you learn by imitating it?
October 3rd, 2006 at 9:58 pm
Yes, I anticipated this response and believe there is some merit to what you’re saying. All I can say is everyone goes through these things how they need to. This has been how I have needed to, and I have the peculiar sensation that I am being brought closer and closer to something with all of this, and that in order to deal with that something, I don’t just need the Crane Kick, but I will need all the training Mr. Miyagi ever put me through which seemed routine and pointless at the time.
October 3rd, 2006 at 10:39 pm
my youngest son started talking about clones today and how we can grow sheep from cells and all that. thenhe asked me if we can grow people. i said we probably can grow a person the same way but it would be disasterous i was about to say, but was unable to put into words he would understand. the adult would have the understanding and intellect of a newborn. in many ways it is similar to immediately experiencing hallucinegens. you are blasted into a new paradigm of awareness without the subtle understanding of months, if not years of preperation. the 30 years of guitar playing that i have in my nervous system, my psyche and my soul make me able to play things that even surprise myself sometimes……………
October 4th, 2006 at 12:57 am
This made me think of something interesting. Whenever squirrels bury nuts, what if they don’t forget where they are like people say, but rather they’re testing out how the nuts respond to different soil places? Are they attempting to diversify where the nuts are so the tree will have a better chance of growing? Are they only eating the nuts that aren’t doing very well? Squirrels are always interesting because they make me think of the Norse idea of them running up and down the Axis Mundi (I think?). They form a really interesting circle with the tree since its dead leaves provide a home for the squirrel, and its nuts provide food.
On the cloning thing, did you see where they found the soft tissue of a t-rex in a bone yesterday? If not I’ll try to find the link.
October 4th, 2006 at 7:32 am
Of course McKenna also gets onto his eschatological thing, saying we don’t have enough time for yoga and therapy etc., and this is why the fast, whizz-bang action of psychedelics is what we need to put the pedal to the metal and so on… I guess someone could hear that part of his rap and totally get the wrong impression. But the mushroom, as an entire plant phenomenon, not just a trip, was very big for him. He and his brother wrote a book in the seventies on cultivating psilocybin mushrooms, and he saw our cultivation of and care for them in the modern world as our part of a symbiosis in which they grant us visions.
Great attitude to disseminating information. Scattering seeds, with an appreciation that some soils are ready, some aren’t (and some are just incompatible). There’s a definite non-linear aspect to initiation, as an on-going process, which I think is inherent (i.e. not just a result of initiatory processes happening willy-nilly in the modern world as opposed to structured processes in traditional societies and esoteric orders). Even things I thought I’d grokked, say 15 years ago, surface again in the light of those years, and it seems like something I’ve never even heard of before.
Ratatosk the squirrel ran up and down Yggdrasil - carrying messages, interestingly enough. Chiefly this was supposed to be gossip, and insults between Nidhogg the dragon at the base of the tree and the eagle at its top. I can’t see squirrels these days without the name “Ratatosk” coming to mind, spoken in a particular way. It’s such an aptly expressive name for them and the way their bodies move.
October 4th, 2006 at 11:51 am
Good. Like any complex issue, ti should be left for him to form his own opinion.
October 4th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
I’ve found there are many different levels of communication present in trees. If you’re sensitive enough, you can sometimes see faces or symbols on the bark pertaining to the specific “personality” of that tree. You can sit underneath one and feel the entire frame of it enveloping you and attempting to spread knowledge. Or you can tap directly into its energy source and find that it is essentially a hive mind and there’s no distinctive personality present in it…just like us humans.
October 4th, 2006 at 12:26 pm
Transcript of Brad Warner and me talking about “The Golden State”
On Aug 5, 2006 –
———————————–
On Aug. 13, 2006:
Justin,
October 4th, 2006 at 7:56 pm
Ok, so this gave me another interesting idea relating to trees. I tend to like what if questions, so here’s a new one: What if the reason we evolved in the Darwinian sense into hominids is because of our relationship to trees? What if living in the forest/in trees for an extended period of time let the first groups of humans emerge? I’ve also either seen McKenna/others say, or I thought when I read it, what if somehow when we ingested a psychoactive plant for the first time it catapulted us into evolution?
October 4th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
Well, that’s super for him!
October 5th, 2006 at 5:28 am
Regarding Mckenna, I’ve found pretty much the same thing. The psychoactive effect of the mushrooms, and the psychoactive effect of growing them, have an increased effect to the point of nearly making the other meaningless if seen in isolation. Growing them presents the entire drama of what it means to be a biological creature. Gestation, birth, life, breeding, death, consumption, and return to something which will further the cycle. It’s there as one nurtures the fungi, with the meticulous eye that they need every day to protect them. That phase ends with the ritual of dehydration and powdering. The next step, ingestion, literally merges the human with the cultivation. Not partially, and not the “feel it because I feel guilty I don’t feel it” appreciation. But unavoidable realization akin to the knowledge that a brick wall is a solid object that’s going to hurt were you to pretend it wasn’t standing in the path of your lifetime jog.
On a more personal note, when they speak to me, it’s always to stress the importance of the symbiotic relationship. The boast is that they’ll give more, to those who give to them in return. Kind to a kind, and excess to an excess. By luck, I found myself able to pick the brain of an awesome old hippy who’d been playing the game longer than I’d been alive. He echoed the same gist, and I learned a lot about how to approach the experience from him. He always maintained that the mushrooms know people, and stop at light shows for the people who are only asking and paying the entities with fireworks instead of a plea and promise for a lamp to light up the road.
Of course that also means that I’ve had two separate pushes to see the mushroom experience in that light, which would push any hallucinitory experience into that direction. I don’t think it matters much though. Whether a product entirely, partially, or not even a little of the set and setting, I’m at a point now where I won’t bother with any mushroom that I didn’t nurse from spore to spore again, or find growing within a setting which held experience and meaning for me.
October 6th, 2006 at 2:18 pm
I’ve been realizing this a lot about plants in general and psychoactive plants in particular: that the whole purpose of plants is essentially to give you what you want (as in the cornucopia - that is what nature is). If what you’re looking for is just a laser light show or some kind of “party” experience, then that’s what you’re likely to get.
The thing is, a lot of us don’t realize what it is that we are really asking for when we go into these experiences. We think we want one thing, but maybe our “True Will” wants something else for us (even if that seems painful to us) and the plants listen to whatever that request is and try to deliver within their power to do so.
October 7th, 2006 at 4:04 am
One time, when I was reading an item on this site, it felt like the walls of my head just popped off, there was like this *bzzt* sensation then *pop*. I don’t think it had to anything do with what I was reading, but the fact that my mind was occupied, combined with my sleep deprivation and whatever else — it just happened. Any ways, I found the walls of my room to be really oppressive and, quite frankly, horrifying.
Any ways, I went outside to take a walk and I was feeling really different and open, it wasn’t gnosis, but something in the same vein. So I encountered this tree, and it wasn’t an especially large tree or distinct, but it seemed to radiate a power that held me in awe, and intimidated me a little bit. It wasn’t a friendly energy, but it wasn’t malevolent either. I would’ve stayed with that tree for a very long time, but it happened to be in someone else’s front-yard, and I felt a bit embarrassed. Looking at it, I would say it had a large presence and I wouldn’t call it indifferent. I can’t say it was addressing me, but it was sort of like catching a stranger’s stare — it was communicative.
Much is made of the indifference of nature, I agree in some ways, but I think that’s largely a hold-over from the mechanistic view of the universe that has prevailed since the enlightenment. I know a lot of rationalists think their view-point requires a certain bravery, “To face this vast uncaring abyss… to make our own light in the dark!”, or whatever, but isn’t it so much more frightening to try and contend with a living universe? One that does respond to your presence, in ways you can’t always predict?
October 7th, 2006 at 11:32 am
Yeah, you’re absolutely right, I think. It’s a far greater challenge to live in a neighborhood with others than it is to live in the desert all by yourself!
October 12th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
[…] One of the things I did really enjoy, though it was not given much coverage in the text was that Don Juan required Castaneda to grow, care for, collect and prepare all of the psychedelic substances himself before he could actually use them. As I’ve written elsewhere, I am beginning to think that this firsthand intimately physical experience of plants may be just as important - if not moreso - than the actual psychedelic experiences these plants offer. […]