T H E C O S M I C G I G G L E

Some things are so obvious that they just slip away. Terence McKenna, whom I left in the drawer for many years, now comes back on my radar. In an interview he talked about the symbiosis between humans and mushrooms. Now one could ask: What do mushrooms and we humans have to do with each other? Firstly, the question is interesting as to why there are substances in plants to which humans react in one way or another. Of course McKenna doesn't talk about satiating mushrooms, but about the other: their psychedelic effect.

Why does man enter into a symbiosis with the surrounding environment?
Answer: Because there is a fascinating relationship between all things in the universe, which are not fully understood.

McKenna argues that the cave drawings of the early humans often depict scenes in which cattle can be seen. These cattle herds, which leave their excrement on the pastures, let mushrooms grow, which have a psychedelic effect on humans. Why do such fungi with such an effect exist anyway?

If one wants to join the cosmic giggling, one could say:

"Because they want to be found."
Adding: "But, I don't know for sure. Isn't that hilarious?"

Where the animals grazed, humans were not far away. They followed the herds because they were a reliable source of food and the animals in turn followed reliable sources of food.

Whom do the mushrooms follow?

I went out to pasture with my friend to look for mushrooms because it became common knowledge that psylos grow in the poop of cows. We could not explain why these mushrooms could be found on some of the areas and why they could not be found on others, and even the search often turned out to be difficult, often we found nothing.

So if you ask "why?" and don't want to be surprised, the answer is: coincidence.

By chance, terrestrial plants grow on this planet, which have random ingredients that accidentally interact with our nerve synapses in a very - giggle - interesting way. By chance, we can turn plant compounds into drugs that have a random effect on biochemistry.

All is just design by and in itself for no further reason.

Evolution is a random process - a deterministic ongoing story coincidentally producing intelligent design. Like an accident of some sorts. Now, isn't it still (!) something to wonder about, even if it was random? Why can't we wonder about randomness itself?

When you still want to wonder that such coincidental things are present you wouldn't want to avoid most of these questions and cannot not be astonished. Being astounded is a quality we highly appreciate. And why wouldn't we?

When was the last time your jaw dropped in awe?

I mean not amazement, not excitement, not arousal, not bafflement, but the REAL THING.

The real thing is the thing which is indescribable. And for the very reason one cannot use human language to describe it it becomes of utmost interest. Why would you otherwise bother? When all is decoded, there would nothing be left to feel an eternal surprise for.

This eternal surprise lasts since millennia. What if it stops?

But then many people have this sense of wondering, buried under a lot of everyday things and want to exchange the everyday.

I recently tried to share my experience with magic mushrooms.

When I told my friends about it, I noticed that they didn't seem to be able to even begin to follow what I was trying to say. I could just as easily have told them about a dental treatment, which would have produced about the same kind of resonance: a rather superficial, barely worth mentioning story. Simply things to talk about. I felt the disappointment affect me. My friends didn't ask questions about this experience, I couldn't even begin to amaze them, because how can they be surprised by something to which they don't seem to have any access, don't even want this?

Poor me actually selfishly wanted to give life to an event which I thought of being this awe and jaw dropping thing

... but actually I abused my friends in telling it (again) in order to give myself this giggly reminder.

We would have to be more like the children telling each other stories by candlelight in the evening and exchanging anecdotes of those they heard others heard about. The adult world doesn't seem to want to wonder about anything anymore, most of it is fed directly into what you already know.

"I've already been there, I already know that," is a very frequent answer, isn't it?

The apparent superiority that gives you an attitude that is not susceptible to surprise is really no consolation. Basically an exchange from something expensive to something cheap. It's a mask that's blasé about things that can't be proven.

The next day I wanted to be astonished

when I asked one of my clients how he became a priest. I had already sniffed him out and suspected there would be something interesting coming up. Which it did.

He told me about a personally experienced miracle, after which his doctor believed him to be dead and predicted only half a year more life for him. Since then more than thirty years have passed and the healing my client told me was that he felt the physical sensation that someone was massaging his chest where his heart was sitting and when he opened his eyes there was no one there. ... Oh, how I excited I became already feeling the eternal giggle coming up!

Other such sensory experiences were made by this man and there was never anyone near him. He interpreted this experience as an encounter with God. The medical examinations then also revealed that he was cured of his illness, which seemed inexplicable to the client's doctor.

But when I wanted to be further fascinated by the story, the cultural background of the man, Christianity and the conviction of a single God prevented me from further immersing myself in this narrative, because the man already began a serious business! He wanted to missionize me and insist on the banality of his interpretation of a religion, so that this rich dialogue threatened to become a difference of opinion. I insisted to stay cheerful and managed it quite successfully through the course of our conversation.

That's why I think that talking about religion should nothing be of a (serious) matter between people. At least, when they want to get along well.

It is completely irrelevant whose son rose from the dead and whether he bears a Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Hebrew name. Instead of talking about the miracle or the metaphor in curious bliss, one reduces an experience to his culture and not paying attention to something experienced, the happening (happy) itself. Thus one reduces the different cultural phenomena to nationalities and these in turn to identities that cling firmly to the "I" and thus basically leads to a dead end. ... Meh ...

For me, it felt like a downgrading of this wonderful experiential narrative, as if it must be set in stone.

I truly understand the longing for sharing an experience like it with others - mind you, the poor me. But I also must say that when the man already started to leave the miracle and wanted to go further into the consequences of it, I was not nearly ready to follow. I'd have preferred to dwell more into that moment where the indescribable had happened. Why? Because I felt on the other hand sceptic towards what he told me. Because, you see, once people start trying this convincing works upon each other than it seems as if they themselves do not indeed believe in their own miracle! They lose their sense of wonder. ... Meh again ...

I would have preferred it if the man had not immediately limited his experience to a certainty,

that is, to have met God as an intellectual entity that has taken care of him, but rather as an experience of which he does not know exactly how to handle it. This is a prime example of a man who seeks to reconcile what is uncertain with what gives certainty. As soon as there is a hold on a moment that can be defined as solid, nothing more can be changed in the form of experience; it wants to be carved in granite by man, so that there is an immutability of the moment.

But it is precisely the paradox that something happens that eludes true grasping and recognition that is the tickling tension in which a person can be/stay creative.

As McKenna puts it so humorously:

Science gives you one free miracle: The Big Bang.

Determinism is a notion that is just the other side of the coin: It claims that "matter" is nothing to wonder about. That we defined "matter" already to it's satisfying fullest and that there is no intelligence whatsoever in the design of something material, that it's pure automata. ... Where is the entertainment?

I'd actually place this notion more closely to a religious belief which states that what one knows, is/needs to be set.

Now, I want to make one thing clear:

No scientist has ever proven what "matter" actually is (supposed to "be").

The assumption that matter came out of nowhere for no reason, that it's just a random singular event is, from my point of view, a reactive impulse to those who give it too much meaning in a human sense.

[But when one wants to have fun in disagreeing than this play of hide and seek should actually become a matter of entertainment, for the sake of peace: why not?]

If you ask me: the annoyance that the deterministic view holds towards the belief in God is a psychological reaction of, for example, to a rigid religious upbringing or the observation and interpretation of such an education around a social environment. It is a psychological - in parts aggressive or contemptuous - defensive reaction against such "nonsense", which one wants to counter with one's own extreme.

I can understand that one gets upset about people who suspect behind everything a divine intention and put this intention into human understanding. It also makes me impatient at times to argue against a personified deity because it seems too certain to me. Now, it's my resistance and harsh judgement that makes a moment difficult. It's not the other person.

Nevertheless, the opposite provokes me in exactly the same way and I resist that explanations about a big bang are given to me and from there everything is done according to a stubborn mechanism without any intelligence, after which all matter is explained and a point is set behind it.

So I can only refer to the quantum physicists who say:

We are sorry. But matter is still a mystery.

As much as we try to determine it, what we have left is its indeterminability. Matter is not a "thing", is what they say. Matter is a process. A wave is not a self-contained determined matter. A particle is not equal to a particle, it can become a wave.

The wave has a temporal sequence, which is coupled to other sequences, which always change when this process is under observation and behaves indefinitely. We are dealing with uncertainty. But the deterministic view ignores this blur and insists that matter behaves in a definite way. It holds the focused beam of a flashlight on an event and "thinks" it has sufficiently understood the event by implying total lack of meaning. I ask: "?"

If you ask: "What caused the big bang?", there is simply no answer. You don't know. To exist in this dilemma of not knowing something is often difficult for people to endure.

So you could declare "not knowing" unimportant and say, "I know enough". But the whole house of cards has already collapsed, because how can one say that the knowledge about matter is already sufficient, since there is no evidence whatsoever that matter behaves in a certain way?

All we know is that matter behaves in an indefinite way.

For me, the belief in God which literally interprets things is not far away from the deterministic viewpoint.
Both views represent extremes that want to weigh themselves in certainty. Both have ceased to wonder. For the one God makes everything clear, nothing remains open as a question, for the other determinism paves everything, nothing remains unsettled as a question. As this open questions can be seen as "irrelevant".

In a sense, both are attached to an image of "certainty", but they go different ways. Believing in the survival of the soul after an earthly death on one hand, earthly technology that results from determinism itself: To create and prolong life, simply for no reason whatsoever, on the other hand. For some everything is destiny and divine, for others everything is coincidence.

But I wonder: How does randomness explain itself then?

The image that emerges in my mind's eye is an unconscious giant in the determinist's mind, a being a hundred meters high, who walks the earth and simply drinks the water of the oceans and tears out whole forests in order to stuff them in his mouth. Who, because he can, builds a device and flies with it to the next planet, where he eats more resources and builds things because he can. By coincidence.

Then there is the God who really keeps every square millimeter under control, who can even penetrate into the thoughts of man and see whether someone is practicing sin or well-being. Who also evaluates every sound and every deed and takes the time to bring every single one of the billions of people to justice. Such a God reminds me too much of my neighbor who doesn't like me. There really are no open questions when I have an idea of God in this way.

Total certainty basically destroys what has been experienced,

transforms it into something weaker, because it automatically excludes other possible (wondrous) alternatives. The explicit naming of something unnameable minimizes creativity and does not increase it. This very strange "God experience" then acts as if it is only explicitly accessible to others if the one who have had this experience limits himself to a certain vocabulary. But he does not see that he already uses his model as closing and no longer as opening.

How about regarding a "miracle" as an ongoing process rather than a self-contained one.

For example, I wouldn't call my experience, which I consider inexplicable, a closed one, because the moment of this event runs along with me. Thus I can recognize that my longing to make this experience accessible to other people is basically an attempt by me to make it accessible to myself again, a retrieval of the sensation, a remembrance of the felt.

So how can someone who says to me, "Oh, that's all the nonsense you're saying," take something away from me? How can I regard someone who accuses me of naivety and dreaming, since he offers me the best opportunity to establish my personal connection to the happy event? So if two people blame each other that what they believe and feel is bare nonsense, they might as well stand in front of a mirror and say, "Okay, here you are. What do you have to tell me?"

The man carries a diamond in a bag and so do I.

The quantum physicist, who has now become aware of this uncertainty of matter and feels as if the universe has just giggled at him, can simply giggle back.

He knows that he knows nothing and that every so far gained certainty will reveal new uncertainties. The knowledge and ability that we humans have collected is just a tiny piece in the big universe and we might never reach an end, because every end holds a new beginning.

But if you don't find this amusing, but feel personally offended that your previous explanation of the world has been revealed by an anecdote that is too humorous, you will find that you know more than the rest, ... seriously!

When you think that the mystery of matter has already been solved you will stick to the deterministic image and instead wish to regard life as not really comprehensible and eternal paradox as "misguided".

The deterministic view says: "We have not yet solved the mystery of life, but we will inevitably do so. There will be a definite end result in the future. We will eventually be ready to create life ourselves, we will travel the universe and we will know."

I, who thinks that one will never stop wondering, says: "It may be that in the future we will travel at the speed of light, it may be that one day we will change into another kind of being by means of augmentation into hybrids, half man, half computer. May be everything.

Nevertheless, the wondering will not stop, because whenever humanity has reached the next stage of evolution and capacity, a new problem is already pushing itself into perception, which we had not considered before.
To really understand "matter" means for me to really understand how the universe came into being.

Once the secret of matter has been deciphered, the universe is no longer a mysterious "place".

If you look at it from the funny side, you could say: spoilsport (!) and plunge the universe into chaos again, because such knowledge would have the same effect that the gods were captured and the game of hide and seek is over.

If every riddle had been solved, the universe would have discovered itself virtually, would have arrived at a total recognition of its self, the question could be:

And now what? What the heavens, Joe, let's play it again!

The whole thing would then dissolve, because otherwise the fun would be spoiled.
Once we have understood a joke, we can never laugh spontaneously about it again, because any effect of surprise would be gone. Except, ... we ... forgot. Now, isn't this also a possibility that we forgot about the joke? In the back of the minds lingers a hunch like a de ja vu ... something slips through and bends itself in spacetime.

Now the determinist and the non-determinist have to argue, because both talk theoretically. In practice, no invention has ever reached its end, no application has yet been perfected. There is always an as much promising as threatening future, depending on conditions arising and your mood in a particular perceived situation. As well as a glorious or inglorious past, also depending on the conditions arising and mood of the thinker, who wants something or doesn't want it.

Back to mushrooms

The events that happen during a mushroom trip are neither bad nor good by nature.
But you should choose your tripping partners very well, just like the setting. Environment and people are important. Since one is susceptible to influence during a trip, the sceptical protection against evil whispers is not present, complete indifference in the being together of the participants can very well be to the detriment of the trippers, it is the responsibility of the consumer to think beforehand about with which people and in which environment he ingests mind-altering substances. There should be prior clarity about what one hopes for from the experience or perhaps better: that one is willing to open up and that fear of the unknown should not be the dominant force.

During my mushroom experience laughter and crying lay so close together that I didn't know how to tell them apart so clearly. I cried my soul out of my body for hours and then again I laughed as if I were the happiest soul on earth. With a brutal honesty - for those who do not eat mushrooms - I said to a friend wholeheartedly: "Oh, now don't keep on talking such foolish stuff! Stop talking at all.", knowing that she knew exactly that I knew nothing and vice versa. After I had cried a whole lake, I felt quite well for some time. It's just a pity that my ego soon had me on the hook again, because then it started to be important what others might have thought of me. But I still assume that none of those present could even begin to describe themselves as sober. So it didn't matter.

As I talked in previous posts (fictional as well as non fictional) about the mushroom experience itself in more detail - referring to the losing sense of self - I won't repeat myself here.

Anyway, I hope this was some kind of entertainment for you. If not, maybe this is it:

Aesthetics: the imagination must serve the ideal of the beautiful. Tastelessness must be avoided at all costs.
90 % of the difficulty in your intellectual life would never have happened if you had just had better taste.

Terence McKenna

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Picture sources:

By NASA, ESA, AURA/Caltech, Palomar ObservatoryThe science team consists of: D. Soderblom and E. Nelan (STScI), F. Benedict and B. Arthur (U. Texas), and B. Jones (Lick Obs.) - http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2004/20/image/a/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7805481

By TarcísioTS at Portuguese Wikipedia - Transferred from pt.wikipedia to Commons by Econt., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3584814