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Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm: Beyond the Doors of Perception into the Dreaming of Earth
One of the reasons that Luther Burbank could directly work with plants to co-create most of the food plants we now take for granted is that he routinely accessed earlier developmental stages, in essence, taking them on as a lens through which to experience the world. This shifted his sensory gating dynamics, opening the doors of perception much wider, allowing a much richer sensory perception to occur. It allowed him to work with the metaphysical background directly. As Helen Keller once remarked of him . . . He has the rarest of gifts, the receptive spirit of a child. Only a wise child can
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This capacity to moderate the doors of perception through the activation of younger developmental stages also points to one of the great lies of our time: human beings are not single egos but are instead composed of multiple ego states.
As brain researcher Mark Kiefer comments: Consciousness is not the “simple result of processing in a single ‘consciousness’ module.”7 There are multiple “modules” or ego states that together make up the “us” that we know as our unique selves. Together these “consciousness modules” form something greater than the sum of the parts, though there is not a one of us who has not and does not tend to take on, from time to time, one of those modules or ego states to the exclusion of the others.
Nevertheless, it is possible to form an alliance between all the various ego states or modules in which something much more than the sum of the parts comes into being as a synchronized whole. this is what inner council work is
Then, when desired, any of the various ego states or modules can be taken on as the primary lens being used through which to see the world. This gives us sophisticated perceptual options through which to analyze the meanings in which we are embedded, which gives rise to a much greater range of behavioral choices. The way we saw the world at infancy or at four or at eight is still an accessible capacity. Those developmental stages exist in one form or another in all life-forms;
Each developmental stage or consciousness module allows different aspects of the layered complexity of the world within which we are immersed to be perceived. That is a primary part of their function. It is an aspect of the emergent behaviors that occur in all self-organized biological systems
We can alter our programming, even at the unconscious level. In fact, every door in the neural network that gates sensory inputs can be altered if desired. We can, in fact, open the doors of perception if we wish to do so, as widely as we wish to do. The ability to alter unconscious sensory gating at will, as Kiefer et al. comment, “ensures the adaptability of cognition even in the unconscious domain.”12 And, the more we practice intentionally opening the doors of perception, the more easily and more fully we can do so. As
Increased sensitization in a sensory neural network, once initiated, is sustained by the synchronization of the rhythmic activity of the enhanced neural group within and between other neural groups in the central nervous system (CNS). In other words, the new functional state creates, in essence, a small biologic oscillator in the CNS to which other neural groups in the CNS synchronize, thus enhancing and stabilizing the new state that has been initiated in that particular neural pathway.
Neuroimaging in the brain shows that once the areas of the brain that process incoming sensory data are sensitized to incoming data, that is, once the gating channels are opened more widely, the sections of the brain that gate that particular type of sensory data stay open.
Altering sensory gating parameters are most easily accomplished in one of three ways, and we’ve already talked in some depth about the first one: 1) having a task that demands a greater focus on incoming sensory data flows. The others are: 2) regenerating a state similar to that which occurred during the first few years of life, or 3) by altering the nature of the gating channels themselves by shifting consciousness
Self-Organization Nothing has undermined the older, more mechanical view of the world than spontaneous self-organization and the resultant nonlinearity of living systems—and their implications. As mathematician Steven Strogatz
Like water turning into ice. And you can’t predict what the system will look like after the phase change. For instance, at one degree above freezing water is still liquid, but a simple decrease of one degree in temperature causes a sudden shift in the water’s state, a phase transition.
This why the potential for a phase change in Earth environment is so dangerous. Such a shift will not be a simple alteration in what we have always known. It will be like water to ice, something completely different, so different in fact that none of the current cultural and scientific assumptions/pictures will be of use to our survival.
as systems researcher Yaneer Bar-Yam puts it, “A complex system is formed out of many components whose behavior is emergent, that is, the behavior of the system cannot be simply inferred from the behavior of its components. . . . Emergent properties cannot be studied by physically taking a system apart and looking at the parts (reductionism).”7
Even more important is the way complex systems seem to strike a balance between the need for order and the imperative for change. Complex systems tend to locate themselves at a place we call “the edge of chaos.” We imagine the edge of chaos as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living system vibrant, and enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy.
Every living (system, phenomenon, organism) is like this. Every one of them exists close to that threshold and every one works, at much greater degrees of complexity than a juggler manipulating his balls
Inflows from the exterior world, from not me toward me, have of necessity to be understood. Their nature—but more importantly their intent—has to be determined, and once that occurs a response to the inflow has to be crafted. By all useful definitions of the term this is intelligent behavior;
As Lewontin goes on to say, “The characteristic of a living object is that it reacts to external stimuli rather than being passively propelled by them. An organism’s life consists of constant mid-course corrections.”11 “Mid-course
the discovery that dogs can add and subtract, or that ravens make tools, or that dung beetles navigate by the stars, or that amoeba farm bacteria for food, or that crocodiles and alligators design and use tools to more easily capture water birds, or that elephants can learn to speak human language, or that dolphins use nonlinear mathematics in seeking and finding their food, examination of the living organisms around us continually reaffirms that intelligence is an attribute of living systems—even when
Or as Lynn Margulis (and Dorion Sagan) once put it, “Our intolerant slogans continually denigrate the nonhuman life with which we share this planet.”
The single-celled slime solves the maze in this way each time it is tested.”23 Toshiyuki Nakagaki, the researcher conducting the study, commented that Even for humans it is not easy to solve a maze. But the plasmodium of true slime mold, an amoeba-like organism, has shown an amazing ability to do so. This implies that an algorithm and a high computing capacity are included in the unicellular organism. 24
1) mathematical relationships that are inherent in Universe can be perceived, and utilized, by more organisms than the human; 2) numbering systems are arbitrary and are only metaphors for those mathematical relationships—they are not foundational; 3) organisms other than the human not only have the capacity to perceive distance but also differentials—they can add and subtract; 4) they possess a sense of congruency—they know when they have the right answer—and the wrong one.
Clark’s Nutcrackers use prodigious memory. Really think of what they can remember, that is, cache locations from two years, that is 20,000 locations. However, each of these locations has a number of aspects that have to be remembered as well: 1) every cache that still has seeds and which ones do not; 2) overflight visual recognition of the general location of all 20,000; 3) the landscape features they are using for triangulation for all 20,000—that is 40,000 landscape features; 4) the exact spot on the landscape feature from which to measure—40,000 of them; 5) the distance from feature
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In spite of continual reports on intelligence in all self-organized biological systems, “brain chauvinism” is still rampant.
Actually, the thing that troubles most of these sorts of people when it comes to seeing the reality of the living organisms around them is their deeply entrenched belief that consciousness and intelligence reside in the brain.
The brain that we think of as a necessity for intelligence is only one possible form a neural network can take and that is determined by ecological function and species shape; it is not essential to intelligence. As neurologist Antonio Damasio puts it, “the mind is embodied, not just embrained.”1 The desire for braaaaains, unsurprisingly, just turns out to be too anthropocentric.
Antibiotic resistant bacteria are now one of the (human) world’s most serious emerging problems. Although
Bacteria literally analyze the antibiotics that they encounter and generate responses to them. They actually remake their genome in order to alter their physical
That bacteria could generate significant resistance to antibiotics in only thirty-five years was considered impossible.
That the human species could be facing the end of antibiotics only sixty years after their introduction was ludicrous.
When bacteria take up any encoded information on resistance, they weave it into their own DNA and this acquired resistance becomes a genetic trait that can be passed on to their descendants forever.
as bacteria gain resistance, they pass that knowledge on to all forms of bacteria they meet.
As Margulis makes plain, “Bacteria are not really individuals so much as part of a single global superorganism.”13
Bacteria are considered, by those who have deeply studied them, not only to be intelligent but also to posses a sophisticated language and a highly developed social capacity.
Colonies of bacteria, Ben-Jacob notes, “have developed intricate communication capabilities, including a broad repertoire of chemical signaling mechanisms, collective activation and deactivation of genes, and even exchange of genetic materials.
And yes, distressingly for reductionists, bacteria do make such things. Bacteria at the bottom of the ocean create insulated electrical cables to heat their cities. Scientists, who first found them, generated some pictures;
So bacteria’s capacities include intelligent tool making. Our belief that braaaaains, that is, an organ that looks somewhat like the one in our heads, is necessary for intelligence is just plain wrong.
Plants, in fact, possess a highly sophisticated neural system and while it does not look like our “brain,” it really is, in actuality, a brain.
Recent advances in plant cell biology allowed identification of plant synapses transporting the plant-specific neurotransmitter-like molecule auxin. This suggests that synaptic communication is not limited to animals and humans but seems widespread throughout plant tissues. 47
the plant brain that emerges always fits its functional shape to the environment in which it appears. The plant neural net, or brain, is highly plastic when compared to ours.
the human brain has approximately 86 billion neurons, about 16 billion of which are in the cerebral cortex. Plants with larger root systems, and more root hairs, can have considerably more brain neurons than the 14 billion contained in rye plants; they can even rival the human brain in the number of neurons. And when you look at the interconnected network of plant roots and micorrhizal mycelia in any discrete ecosystem, you are looking at a neural network much larger than any individual human has ever possessed.
Old growth aspen root systems can spread through as much as a hundred acres of soil creating a neural network substantially larger than Einstein’s or any other human that has ever lived. They are, sometimes, far, far more intelligent than human beings.
Irrespective of the chemical he used, Bose found that the plant responded identically to the human; the chemicals had the same effect on the plants nervous systems as it did the human.
“Smart plants can memorize stressful environmental experiences and can call upon this information to take decisions about their future activities.”54 That is, they plan ahead.
Roots of plants are exquisitely aware of self and not-self and engage in sophisticated interactions with a wide range of living organisms.
The plant roots enter into symbiotic relationships with bacteria, fungi, and other plants that are highly sophisticated.
(Plants also speak using auditory signals through a complex sound-based language that is far more ancient than the human though it exists in a much subtler sound spectrum than our own.)
The world is made up of a series of nested self-organized systems within other nested self-organized systems within other self-organized systems. They, together, make up the much larger system we know as Earth, the living, self-organized biological organism that James Lovelock named Gaia. And all of them are intelligent.
Lynn Margulis once put it . . .
Perhaps the greatest stumbling block in the way of widespread acceptance of Gaia is the implicit shadow of doubt it throws over the concept of the uniqueness of humanity in nature. Gaia denies the sanctity of human attributes. If intricate planning, for instance, can be mimicked by cunning arrays of subvisible entities, what is so special about Homo sapiens and our most prized congenital possession, the human intellect? The Gaian answer to this is probably that nothing is so very special about the human species or mind. Indeed recent research points suggestively to the possibility that the
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