Vegetal Reality Theory

So on this blog I've given a lot of attention to the "how" of entheogens. How they work. What chemicals are active. How to use them. But, once you know how to access these spiritual places you start to have very different questions. What does it mean? Why do all these plants cause this... thing to happen!

The answer is... there currently is no answer! But there are a number of theories, and to take a break from looking at pictures of plants and the religious history of the cultures that use them I'd like to talk about one of the more interesting theories out there. This theory is called the Vegetal Reality Theory, but in a lot of ways to fully grasp VRT you need to have a firm understanding of the Gaia Theory.

Gaia Theory, first proposed by James Lovelock in the 1970s, proposes that organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings to form a self-regulating, complex system that contributes to maintaining the conditions for life on the planet. In other words every living and non living thing on planet Earth is working as a large super organism in order to maintain the fragile conditions that make life possible. The theory seems to hold up considering how rare life is in the universe (to our knowledge). Earth is the only place where life is known to exist.

This idea of the Earth as an integrated living being is not a new idea in human history, and dates back into the earliest of human mythology. Gaia, the namesake goddess for the theory, was the primal Greek goddess personifying the Earth. Many of the people mentioned in the entheogenic cultures speak of a "mother earth" figure and respect and worship nature, be it plant, animal, water, air, or stone.

In western culture as far back as the 1700s scientists have been suggesting a correlation between geological and biological processes. James Hutton, Alexander von Humboldt, Vladimir Vernadsky, Aldo Leopold, and Stephen Harding all have supported the idea of a "living Earth".  In Stephen Harding's Animate Earth he posits perhaps the best summary of the idea.

It is at least not impossible to regard the earth's parts—soil, mountains, rivers, atmosphere etc,—as organs or parts of organs of a coordinated whole, each part with its definite function. And if we could see this whole, as a whole, through a great period of time, we might perceive not only organs with coordinated functions, but possibly also that process of consumption as replacement which in biology we call metabolism, or growth. In such case we would have all the visible attributes of a living thing, which we do not realize to be such because it is too big, and its life processes too slow.

It is important to note that the theory does not believe that the Earth is, in the strictest sense, an organism. Instead, as stated by microbiologist and coauthor of the Gaia Theory, Lynn Margulis, the Earth is "an emergent property of interaction among organisms... the series of interacting ecosystems that compose a single huge ecosystem at the Earth's surface. Period... Gaia is just symbiosis as seen from space."

So what does all of this have to do with eating a Mushroom and seeing things? I'm glad you asked.

Gaia Theory forms the basis for a new theory proposed by media theorist, Roy Ascott. In his theory he creates a model of three VRs: virtual reality, vindicated reality, and vegetal reality.

So we are all pretty familiar with the first two VRs. Vindicated reality is the reality you are experiencing right now most likely. You can touch, feel, smell, see and interact with everything in "the real world". You can feel the hard ground below your feet. Your world works based on certain rules, and try as hard as you can, you are not able to break those rules.

Virtual reality exists... kind of. You can get on a computer go on to a minecraft server and interact with everything in that server so long as you play by the rules in that reality. Again, try as you might, unless you go in and change the rules you have to play by the rules of that reality. This applies to many games and immersive technological experiences. The difference between virtual and vindicated reality is you need an interface in the vindicated reality to access virtual reality. A computer, or some kind of hardware.

Vegetal reality is similar to virtual reality, theorizes Ascott. You need an interface in the form of an entheogen to access the space. Much like with computers certain entheogens are better for getting into this vegetal reality than others. Once in this reality there are certain rules that apply much like the code in virtual reality, or the laws of physics in vindicated reality.

When you take an entheogen in a low enough dose you are not fully in this vegetal reality. As a result you see the physiological effects of chemicals. Breathing walls, altered perspective, brighter lights, possible open eye visuals if you are close. Its almost like a loading screen, but if you don't have enough to break through the door to this other reality you'll peak and come back down without ever glimpsing this other place.

When you take, say, DMT, Iboga, large ammounts of Psylocibin you are able to break through into a fully immersive new reality. Vegetal Reality takes hold of your senses, you no longer feel connected to your former self and ego-death happens. You are no longer conscious or aware of vindicated reality. Many people describe feeling a part of the all. Everything is one. All life has a common source.

Vegetal Reality is the mind of Gaia. It is the rules and regulations that run all living creatures on the planet including plants and animals some theorize. It is the collective being of all organisms and the spirit of life on the planet.

An excerpt from Rak Razam's Aya Awakening

Indeed, the parallels between shamanism and cyberspace have been brewing for a while now, and seem to be dovetailing in many ways. The development of the technosphere is all based on networks, and bio-mimicry, copying pathways first established by nature. There's even something organic in code itself

Roy Ascott, a "network artist" and figurehead in Ars Electronic, an early web-based art movement, see hyperspacial dimensions plant sacraments can take us to as equally valid as cyberspace. The only difference is that plants are the interface not computer chips...

Virtual reality, dependant on interactive digital technology is telematic and immersive. Vindicated reality, based on mechanical technology is prosaic and Newtonian. Vegetal reality is quite unfamiliar to the Western praxis... and is often viewed with fear and loathing by those entombed in vindicated reality. Vegetal reality can be understood in the context of technoetics as the transformation of consciousness by the plant technology and the ingestion of psychoactive material.

One reason for this prejudice by those in the vindicated reality is the paradigm itself is a product of a disconnection from and an ignorance of the plant kingdom on an experiential level. It's no coincidence that the rise of the industrial age, when Charles Babbage invented the Difference Engine, the first prototype computer, was also the period when the Western connection to the Earth was at its lowest. The knowledge of the sacred mushrooms, mescaline, and peyote had been virtually eradicated  along with the Indians that revered them in the Americas, and ayahuasca and other plant sacrements were yet to make it out of the jungle.

Without plant interfaces, the victorian era made its own tools, and came to see the world as part of a mechanical universe. Humans commodified and consumed more than the fair share of nature's resources, and that concentrated gorging also produced the technological marvels of the 20th century. The potential energy in the great green web was just redistributed.

While biologists are quick to point out that humans are in a form of seed-carrying symbiosis with plants, how many I wonder, would be able to see the full tapestry the plants have woven, and how the green web, having activated deeper levels of consciousness in us seed-bearing humans, could be seen to have seeded the digital web, in its own likeness? Not many, I'm sure, because the vast majority have yet to wake up to the idea of plant consciousness itself. 

Its only a theory. And not a very well supported theory at that. But I think it makes for a fascinating
read and definitely something to think about and potentially refine.

Thanks for reading!