Once you accept that you and i are agents within an intelligent system, new explanations for the life’s anomalous occurrences present themselves. Once you start to explore those anomalies, armed with this new perspective, a very different picture of human history emerges. It is also a liberating experience to find out that we can communicate with other entities within the system.

What do psychedelic aliens have to do with forests anyway, you may ask? Seems like too many unrelated subjects are being included. Well, you have heard it before, everything is connected to everything else. Herein i will show that it is not merely a romantic metaphor as some would like you to believe, but an overriding property of reality. Exploring the connections between religion, psychedelics, symbiosis in complex adaptive systems and alien encounters, can lead to some interesting revelations.

Besides, we now know for sure that space travel is possible, by both man made vehicles and spores carried by the solar winds, therefore we all may be aliens.

Just as science needs a unified theory to bring together its many disciplines, the rest of us need a unified theory of reality. This one works for me.

Throughout there will be tips on how to expand your natural communication skills. I will give you exercises that you can use to verify my conclusions.

In short, biological systems are constructed as if they are meant to be communication networks. Everything from tree trunks, roots, branches, leaves to coastlines and watersheds is built as if for the transfer information. Some coincidence. If we honor this evidence and look at biological systems as if they function primarily as information processors, a whole new model of reality begins to take shape.

When we look at matter as information stored in physical form, like memory in a computer, the network like construction of biological systems makes perfect sense. Biological systems process and transfer matter/information with great efficiency.

Matter as information is more than bits, it is more dynamic than that, more like strings of bits that have coherence. The information of reality is organized in the form of stories. The physical world is current state of all of the stories being told. Stories aren’t random, but unfold in very predictable ways. Stories follow rules, laws of communication that run through all living systems.

Within this new model many of the claims of the ancients take on new significance, many of the anomalies uncovered by science disappear and a pathway to a truly sustainable future reveals itself. This is the real significance of the Information Age. It is not only that we have learned to use these formulas to build our networks, but that we have found the best model for reality we have yet discovered, and it is virtual.

On the other hand, even for the most hard core of the survival of the fittest practitioners, the forest is the only road back. It is the forest goddess, through her plant spirit messengers, that can reconnect lost souls with their source.

I didn’t get this model of intelligent microbes from books or discussions nor did i think this up on my own. I got this view of straight from the horses mouth. I got it directly from a member of the microbial mat. It came in an intelligent exchange, sort of an interview, where i asked questions and received answers. My encounter with this plant spirit overloaded my psyche with information that spawned more questions. I have spent the last thirty plus years sorting through that information and comparing it with other sources. I have interviewed other plant spirits along the way. I’ve learned valuable lessons from living alone in forests, deserts and mountains. I have found a landscape exactly as described by magicians, mystics and indigenous cultures in general. It is from my experience probing this separate reality that i obtained this version of human history.

So, this model of “how it all works” that the plant spirits have collectively laid on me, fits very well with the latest studies in biology, genetics, adaptive complex systems, symbiosis, quantum mechanics and information processing in general. The plant spirits got it right! So, for me the forest goddess is much more than a metaphor. The physical world we live in is intelligent. The whole Universe is a communication; the story of Life being told. We are part of that story. We are built from the same story elements as all of creation. Our bodies are made from intelligent parts that all communicate with our environment. Our bodies understand the language of Life, even if our intellect doesn’t.

Each of these scenarios is dependent on a specific world view, but they have some common elements the indicate they might each have part of the story. It could be that each is a separate description of the same phenomenon? Could there be a simple biological explanation? I think there is. It requires no new knowledge, simply a new way of looking at human history.

This remarkable thing we call consciousness is the product of billions of interacting information processing subsystems combining their considerable output into a single, realtime, interactive, dynamic, but wholly virtual environment. This feat has been accomplished 100% by Nature.

Somehow the human body’s trillions of cells and trillions of nonhuman microorganisms produce the illusion of self as a single entity. Billions of bits of incoming information blend into a coherent interior model of the outside environment. This is a Natural phenomenon. Apparently this phenomenon is repeated in smaller and less complex organisms. Even single celled creatures interact with their environment in ways that show a semblance of sense of self. It would seem that the phenomenon might be universal. If that be the case, then the concept that trillions of seemingly separate entities might generate a similar super entity is not so far fetched. The forest acts as if it were a single organism. The Planet acts the same way. This is the way of adaptive complex systems.

The ancients knew that they lived in an intelligent system of communication, cooperation and memory. They personified the aspects of the system by giving them names and attributes. Science does the same thing, hanging names on invisible and even unknown objects, at will. They continue to crank out their own brand of mythology, unrelated to reality.

The mythic events the ancients recounted were meant to show relationships between invisible forces. Just as the descriptions put forth by our modern science, part of the motivation has always been to manage the behavior of the masses.

What our western civilized science has so foolishly discarded as superstitious myth is really a sophisticated description of the invisible information processing system that monitors and controls the behavior of all species, including human beings. The difference is that science shows no respect for the sentience of other living things. In our present state, nothing short of renewed reverence for Nature will get us back into the system.

Here we find a good spot, beneath one of the oldest trees, one with the many rings of memory, a large network connecting Sky and Earth, many symbiotic partners, many descendants and thus a main communications hub in this local expression of the Forest Goddess System.

Slowly the sounds change as some creatures forget we are here. Others aren’t alarmed as long as we remain still. Listen to the sounds, creatures large and small singing their songs, shouting their location, crying the news of their neighborhood. Close your eyes and let the sounds wash over you in waves of meaning. “Here I am, Life is good, Let’s get it on”, repeated over and over, in countless forest dialects.

And everybody is listening as well. One creature’s mating call sounds the dinner bell for another. This wall of sound is just one level of the communication going on in the forest. And we humans can hear only a very narrow band of sound vibrations at that.

Then take color. Here is a totally different spectrum of communication. Color has meaning by itself; it is used for identification, signaling ripeness, time for mating and other environmental cues. Another instance of only a narrow band of vibrations being available to our consciousness. The communications continue up and down the scale in wave lengths invisible to us.

The air around us is filled with molecules of fragrance and stench, pheromones attracting and repelling. On every level the forest is a sea of information woven into a tapestry of meaning: alerting, selecting, advertising, camouflaging, promising and deceiving.

On the microscopic level, every cell of every life form communicates with the cells around it. They respond to messages brought to them by hormones through blood streams, electric impulses from nerves and by way of their wireless connections. All input is compared to its history. Every action is remembered, every failure flagged, every success reinforced. That’s going on at the cellular level in all living things. The process is reflected in behavior at the creature level as well. Every physical entity within an ecosystem compares their input to their history and remembers their successes and failures. So do the symbiotic relationships.

Our brain works the very same way. Our neurons communicate with other neurons, respond to neurotransmitters and fire in waves that we interpret as experience. Communication is a fundamental aspect of living things.

Because language seems to set us apart from the animal world, we have concluded that it is only the advanced human brain that can create and communicate information. That’s our claim to fame as intelligent beings, we communicate. However, its is intelligent communication that makes all living systems alive. Communication is fundamental to biological systems.

Besides the communication networks we can see and hear all around us, there are more. Beneath our feet the soil is laced with bacterial and fungal growth intertwined into a multilevel communications network. This thick mat of interwoven microbial fibers interconnects trillions, upon trillions of nodes, in a complex network of neuron-like connections. Modern science claims that plants do not have a nervous system because they can’t find anything that looks like one. If what it looks like is to be our criteria, then we must consider the possibility that this bacterial/fungal mat acts like the nervous system for the forest.

Recent experiments have shown that this underground network passes information throughout the forest. What could the microbial underground have to talk about? For one, when a tree is attacked by a species of beetle, neighboring trees begin taking protective measures, secreting substances that repel the pest. Another example, if you were to die here in the forest, this CSI team would take you apart cell by cell, and report to the system exactly what you are made of.

In fact, the information gathered by every living thing in the forest eventually ends up being deconstructed by the microbes dominating the forest floor and soil beneath. When there is a fatality or someone defecates, it is the microbes who dismantle the fallen and investigate the internal information stored in their tissue and memory. When we plot the feedback loops active in the forest system we find they all cycle back through this microbial mat.

For example, one loop begins with water and nutrients being provided to the roots of a tree by the microbial mat. This mat is the combined growth of fungi and bacteria that services the roots of all plants

The tree pumps the solution up to the leaves where photosynthesis occurs. Light energy is used to make sugars which are transported to building sites, where growth takes place. The leaves eventually die and fall to the ground where they are disassembled by the fungal mat, completing one loop. Some of the sugars are used to entice and feed pollinators, while still more sugars are used to build fruit and seed. The fruit entices and feeds the seed distributors. All of this activity produces a steady stream of leaves, flowers, bark, feces and dead bodies that fall to the forest floor. This litter is a constant flow of information about the state of the forest that is disassembled and analyzed by the microbial mat. Each bit of litter carries the information of its path through the system. The mat furnishes the input and then analyzes the output of each loop.

An important note: About 65% of the energy gathered by the leaves ends up nourishing the microbial mat. If you are familiar with the “follow the money” concept in economics you will notice that following the energy serves the same function in an ecosystem. The idea that this layer of decay on the forest floor was composed of scavengers that depended on falling debris for their livelihood is not accurate. This microbial mat benefits most from photosynthesis of any segment of the forest.

This is where the story of humanity begins. Science and religion agree that this was a turning point in the history of the human kind. The transition from a relatively carefree existence within a biological Eden to the harsh life of a hunter gatherer on the savanna undoubtedly took place. It is easy to say that the shrinkage of the forests was the cause, but there is more to the story. Beside human beings there were countless other species of plants, animals and microorganisms that also underwent profound changes during this transition. Long established symbiotic relationships were broken and new ones forged. We didn’t make the changes alone. We were then, and are now, members of a community.

Our story begins deep in the forest, immersed in a sea of information. Our every action involved an interaction with another forest species. All of our food, shelter and stimulation were provided by the forest. Then, for reasons unknown, the forests began to shrink.