Before There Were Forests

Every handful of living topsoil contains more microorganisms than there are human beings on Earth. All those billions of creatures aren’t living isolated existences, but are organized into colonies. That is they are organized into cooperating and communicating networks that share nutrients and information.

These are the ancient ones, the oldest and most stable products of evolution. They were here first, before animals, plants or any multicellular creatures.

These microorganisms represent the primordial intelligence that learns and builds on what it knows about itself, in an organized, purposeful, goal oriented progression. And it starts right here with the tiny creatures that understand information processing, communication networks and symbiosis.

The Jigsaw Puzzle of Life

My sweetheart and i like to do jigsaw puzzles. Putting one together is satisfying on several levels. We have fun.

I get an extra kick out of seeing the pieces as packets of information, also on different levels. The shape of the pieces is information that determines how they fit with their immediate neighbors. On each piece you have bits of information as brush strokes, lines, shapes and color, that also needs to match its neighbors. This is a separate level of information from the shapes of the pieces themselves. Both of these levels pertain to the assembly of the puzzle. When the puzzle is solved, the assembled bits produce a new level of information: the picture. The picture, in turn can produce another level of information by telling a story.

In the jigsaw puzzle we have levels of information woven together to support a system of encrypted data storage.

Atoms are packets of information limited to their connections by their shape. They also carry another level of information in their charges, spins and wave function, variables separate from the molecular shape. These internal variables are connected to externals through the laws of quantum mechanics. It looks to me like data storage with relational links, like a database.

There are infinite levels of information woven into biological systems, each one representing a web of quantum connectivity with its own level of functionality, the levels immediately above and below, and to all levels ever interacted with. It is a living breathing hyper-relational database that acts like it is a super quantum computer solving for the most efficient growth, reproduction and dispersal through adaptation.

That’s my idea of fun. =-)

What to expect

This presentation is based a couple of concepts at odds with some of the basic assumptions of science and religion. The first is that the biosphere as an intelligent entity. What makes it intelligent is that it communicates. The system intakes, processes and distributes information to and from all agents within its system. That relates to the second concept, that evolution is not a random process, but one controlled by intelligent, goal oriented communication.

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.

Life is Communication

When we combine the findings in the field of biology with general systems theory we find an unexpected mathematical synchronicity. The formulas that govern the formation of networks in complex systems are the same for the growth of biological systems and our beloved internet. The blood flowing through your veins is following the same fractal power laws as your email. It has taken the smartest people on the planet decades of study, trial and error to figure out how to run a truly complex communications network, but these laws governing the efficient transfer of information have been in use in biological systems all along.

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.

Plant Communication

Great interview! Talk to yer plants and good things happen. =-)

This Path Isn’t for Everyone

This path isn’t for everyone. There those who really fear the forest. They have been brought up to think of Nature as the enemy, to be conquered and managed. To go into the forest is an act of bravery that takes planning, special equipment and most of all, courage. The idea of a benevolent goddess of the forest is foreign or even repulsive to the western warrior mentality. If she exists, she must be fought and beaten, says the warrior. To the mainstream of this industrial/consumer society, She doesn’t exist unless She can be sold for profit. To most environmentalists she is nothing more than a convenient metaphor.

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.

Mother Tree

While i’m writing about the forest goddess this video explains the science behind Her.

More Than a Metaphor

That’s why i have brought you deep into the forest, to give you human history from a different point of view. We’ve had the history of civilization written for us by the ones who have profited from the exploitation of the Biosphere. The version i am presenting comes from my communication within this system.

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.

Out of the Loop

If bio-systems are all about communication, how and why have human beings been cut out of the loop? In one version it has something to do with god, a tree, and a serpent. In another it was the loss of the rich biochemical soup we were fed in a mature forest that caused our mental capacities to diminish. In yet another we met a mind altering mushroom that stimulated our cultural development. In still another, aliens from deep space altered our DNA to make us a slave species. To indigenous people around the world, westerners have simply chosen not to listen to the spirits and have cut themselves out of the loop.

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.

Mimicking Nature

We have learned to mimic Natural systems with our language, art and music, then claim we invented them. With all of our acquired skill and knowledge we are late comers to the game. For example, the fractal power laws we have discovered that build our most complex communications networks have been in use in biological systems from the beginning. DNA is a fundamental language more sophisticated than anything mankind has cobbled together. Our most sophisticated information processing technology is nothing when compared to what our nervous system provides for us: a living, breathing, feeling, human experience.

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.