Welcome to day two of my week long posting challenge (self-created and imposed)
“Animals came from fungi. You and I are actually fungal bodies.” Paul Stamets
Today I want to share with you a video called Stoned Ape and Fungal Intelligence which I watched recently and had to re-watch and write about it because I adored it so much. My sister Janice brought it to my attention, and I shared it with my family knowing they, like I, will never tire of hearing fascinating nature stories and especially so about fungi!
I owe my deep love of fungi to my dear mother, Arlene McGuigan, whose love and knowledge far, far surpasses my own. My childhood kitchen counter at home often had mushrooms cap down on paper toweling so my mom could get a spore print in order to properly identify a new find. Mom still gathers both choice edibles and unknowns for identification when she walks the woods in mushroom season. Mom would be too humble to call herself an expert, but she learned from some of the Island’s best (I am recalling naturalist Dr. Katherine Clough leading mushroom walks mom and dad took us on when we were little) and mom continues gleaning knowledge from her ever growing collection of books!
So when Janice sent this video, my heart pumped a little faster. She and her husband Rob had the good fortune of attending a lecture by renowned mycologist Paul Stamets in Seattle a number of years ago regarding how mushrooms can save the world. Although he does mention the real potential of mushrooms to help prevent further biodiversity loss that is not the focus of this video.
Stoned Ape and Fungal Intelligence is a fun, visually artistic, rendering highlighting points of a podcast interview between podcaster Joe Rogan and Stamets himself regarding the Stoned Ape Theory by Terrance McKenna. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_McKenna It is less than twelve minutes long but moves so quickly and is so information dense that it seems like only a few minutes have passed.
As a firm believer in the ways the natural world humbles human hubris, I love it when Stamets points out, “Mushrooms have had their form longer than we’ve had our form by a billion years.” As a form of ancestral intelligence, mushrooms “are elders”.
To show the intelligence of fungi, Stamets references a Japanese test conducted using slime molds and oats after which the scientists conducting the experiment declared that the results were a “demonstration of cellular intelligence”. See for yourself-- it is astonishing!
Back to the stoned ape theory of McKenna, Stamets sees it more correctly termed an hypothesis rather than theory. Stamets describes it by hypothesizing that our more recent (than fungi) ancestors—apes—might have come upon a particularly abundant fungi called Psilocybe cubensis, containing psilocybin which when consumed “opens the floodgates to the senses”. He also notes that around this time “human brain capacity more than doubled”.
Could our ape ancestors have eaten enough psilocybe cubensis over a long enough period of time for “epigenetic neurogenesis” to have occurred? And what might another such mega-increase of consciousness expansion potentially mean to our very troubled world? Watch the video and see if you are as inspired to learn more as I am!
A side note to this is a link to another book called "How To Change Your Mind" by Michael Pollan, which I borrowed from my brother-in-law early last autumn regarding psychedelics and the mystic’s mind. I have not included that book in this challenge but it may appear at a later date in another discussion and too is a (mostly) worthwhile read.
Ashttps://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/529343/how-to-change-your-mind-by-michael-pollan/9780735224155/
Thanks for reading!
In peace and love,
Jill
"We are ready for the next quantum leap in human consciousness!" 😚