The Psilocybin Solution

quote by Einstein, this time pertaining to the reverence felt by at least some scientists toward the Universe with which we interface. Einstein openly notes that this emotion “takes the form of a rapturous amazement at the harmony of natural law, which reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.”^{46}

I almost second that emotion. Human thinking might not be an “insignificant reflection” at all. Far from it. Indeed, I presume that if we divine natural intelligence, acknowledge it, and really feel it, then this represents a highly refined reflection of that intelligence. Which implies that such a cortex-embodied reflection is of functional import, facilitating a sort of self-realization factor of natural intelligence as it were. We explore these issues in the next chapter.

TEN A Neo-Shamanic Climax

As we have seen, the impressive fine-tuning of Nature is most clearly indicated in the evolutionary process that Nature has facilitated here upon the Earth. Over some three and a half billion years, our planet has transformed itself from a lifeless mass of rock into a veritable metabolizing organic matrix in which countless elegantly patterned organisms swarm about the Earth’s surface, each organism an informational expression of natural intelligence. Yet, like the hour hand of a clock, scientists have failed to discern the context-driven intelligence of evolution, claiming instead that evolution is essentially a dumb and mindless process. But this can only be a subjective inference likely drawn according to the perceived duration over which evolution manifests, a duration so great that the intelligence operating over such a span remains all but invisible. If we instead imagine viewing a time-lapse film of the biosphere wherein three and a half billion years of information-gaining evolution are compressed into but one intense second, then modern electronic human culture and human consciousness explode instantaneously into existence, bursting forth out of the Earth’s ocean of elemental constituents. This awesome pattern of self-organization can be no mere accident. To those who would still scoff at this assertion, I can only ask them this: If the aforementioned capacity of the Universe does not suggest a great intelligence at work, then what sort of Universe would?

Notwithstanding sullen detractors, if we embrace our River of Life metaphor, the totality of life represents the thrust of an intelligent process of information integration, and I argue that this is the essence of reality, the essence of the process that bred and killed Einstein and that controls our destiny also. Because all the information needed to support confluential patterning is etched into the “software” of the Universe, life and the emergence of consciousness can be viewed as a kind of translation whereby the code or meaning inherent in reality is read out over time. Somewhere within the reality process a biosphere had to form, since it was coded for in the lawful contextual fabric of the Universe. And within such a biosphere—of which there may be countless millions in the Universe—evolution was destined at some time to produce nervous systems and, eventually, brains capable of embodying consciousness. Patterns forever falling naturally into place like some cosmic jigsaw.

The conscious aspect of Homo sapiens thus resolves itself as a potent expression of the latest and most reflective form of information integration to emerge out of Nature—reflective because our kind is able to reflect upon how we came to be. In a real way, the human cortex is a biologically wrought mirror able to catch the true face of Nature upon its refined surface.

As with all other fluidic patterns of information, consciousness really was poised to materialize, its emergence dependent, like everything else, on the laws and forces of Nature along with prevailing contextual conditions. And so here we stand, atop the jungle and atop the technology we have created, our gaze now set on the expanding intelligible cosmos. Each human psyche, imbued with meaning from the larger context in which it has arisen, is able to wonder at the mystery of it all and even to glimpse the orchestrating intelligence in whose hands we are like transformed clay. In an instant of cosmic time, consciousness has arisen out of physics, chemistry, and biology, a living mirror able to reflect the intelligent forces that so engendered it.

Forecasting the Future

The evolution of life on Earth, the gradual elaboration of the biosphere, and the emergence of conscious human culture strongly suggest that we are inside a most interesting and creative part of the Universe. It is as if one of the mightiest currents within the River of Life were flowing around us right here and right now, focused within our modern electronic culture. Indeed, if the creative center of the Universe is the place where the most elaborate kinds of information integration are taking hold, then we are surely in or near the center. Or at least we are amid one of the focal points of natural intelligence. The amount of information being organized in one way or another all around us is so dense that one can feel it. Actively flowing information bombards us at every turn as it seeks resolution. Early twenty-first century culture with its global cyberspatial network is like some effervescent protoplasm exuded by the biosphere as it seeks to attain cohesion and stability at some higher level of organization.

Those scientists who diligently propound the myth that we are mere bystanders on a speck of dust remote from the heart of the Universe clearly do the phenomena of life and consciousness a major disservice. As far as we know, in terms of informational activity, the existence of humanity (seven billion potentially interconnected minds) is far and away more complex and intriguing than anything else in the known Universe. The Earth’s biosphere, in its totality including all of human culture, is surely the place to be.

If reality is indeed a rushing river of integrating information, it might well be destined to meet some final organized form or pattern. Actually, this would appear to be an inescapable implication if my reasoning so far is correct. For if the evolution of organic life and human consciousness represents the inexorable unfolding of a potential woven into the fabric of Nature, then what further potential is yet to be expressed? If natural intelligence is as powerful as I suspect, there absolutely must be some final point or solution to its prodigious endeavors.

To give the reader a taste of such a scenario, consider the following thought experiment. Geneticists tell us that a fair proportion of the DNA found in all organisms serves some as yet unknown function. On a worldwide scale, the total amount of this so-called junk DNA must be immense. But what if it were a form of latent information that was set to go into action only when environmental circumstances were in a particular state? What if the biosphere suddenly assumed a context to which this globally distributed DNA was tuned? Anything might happen. All organisms might suddenly mutate and forge themselves anew. The possibilities are endless since DNA is so rich in its capacity to organize chemical and biological processes. Perhaps the reader can think of some alternative possibility.

I offer such wild speculation not because I believe it to be true, but because it highlights, in principle, how reality as we know it might well be coded to produce some climactic output at some latter stage of its evolutionary progression. Equally plausible is the idea that our interconnected computer technology might spawn some new level of informational cohesion—a kind of virtual dimension into which the agency of human consciousness can be transferred. In point of fact, as I previously remarked, through the rise of telecommunications and computing technology, the Earth does seems to be wiring itself up into an integrated digital network, a bioelectronic entity in which widely dispersed informational systems like the human psyche can instantly communicate with one another across the globe. This magical technology, similar as it is to the communicational activity of the synapsing neuronal brain, is clearly evolving at an unprecedented rate, and the eventual emergence of a more “tangible” cyberspatial dimension of some kind seems assured. Indeed, judging by the boom in media speculation about the near future of computing systems along with the escalating popularity of Internet-enabled Wi-Fi phones, it would appear that a fully immersive cyberspace of one sort or another is within reach.