Psychedelics as Nature’s Teachers
Psychedelics alone are not the solution to any of humankind’s problems. However, the proper reintegration of psychedelics into contemporary societies and cultures represents the beginning, a sowing of seeds of change to a multigenerational process of healing, social transformation, and ecological regeneration.
As a species we face various problems. Some individual, some collective — they are intertwined. Everything is interconnected. The mental health and environmental crisis are the same problem, that problem being disconnection. At the root of our psychological, systemic, and environmental problems is the human self, and the human self’s radical disconnection from the planet that gave birth to the self, the psyche, the human ego.
By making psychedelics illegal, we’ve effectively prohibited access to a fundamental source of intelligence that not only serves ourselves, but nature as a whole. We’ve disconnected ourselves from the intelligent planet that birthed us. Naturally, our health is declining, we’re violently destroying the environment on which we depend to survive, and we’re violently discriminating and harming each other, all amidst an unrelenting focus on material production and consumption to fill a spiritual void with physical filler. We’re lost.
The human self, or ego, has been left unchecked as we've denied ourselves a relationship with the Earth and the various intelligent ancient organisms that make this planet home.
Psychedelic substances come from living and intelligent organisms. Most notably, psychedelics are found in plants and fungi species, organisms which have existed and evolved on Earth for much longer than humanity. It is possible that by being in relationship with these ancient plant and fungi species through their ingestion and subsequent chemical transference these non-human organisms play a role in promoting greater intelligence in the human mammal. Psychedelic substances act as neurobiological keys that give the human access to more information, or intelligence, thus making the human more whole through brain activity that promotes a sense of interconnectedness, allowing for perceptions and behaviours from the human organism that are more aligned with and harmonious with the greater planetary system in which all organisms seek to survive.
For now, this idea is only a hypothesis — better known as The Psygaia Hypothesis. In time, within the next 30 years, perhaps we will have the scientific foundations to substantiate what Terence McKenna speculated over 20 years ago: that psychedelics did drive human evolution. Yet, we can only find out we're willing to learn humbly and put our own will aside.