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Plants probably aren't conscious, but if they were, I think they'd feel like how I felt on Salvia.
The stupidest, most unscientific thing I have ever read in my life.
Way to just make shit up and not, you know, cite things, or provide evidence, or use peer-reviewed legitimate source material.
This was kind of interesting, though. Not indicative of plants being conscious, however; it would seem to be more of a stimulus-response kind of thing. It's amazing how much living organisms can do without being "conscious", which makes it even more remarkable that humans should be conscious at all.
Why the sudden interest in botany? Well, I tried Salvia, and had a stronger trip than anyone else I know who tried it did. I can't even describe it. For those who don't know, Salvia divinorum is a species of sage plant used historically by the Mazatec people of the Oaxaca region of Mexico. It's distinct from other common psychedelics, such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin, in that it does not contain alkaloids, but rather, is a kappa-opioid receptor agonist. As its odd chemistry would suggest, it's unlike anything else I've ever tried ever, and I've had interesting and vivid experiences involving cannabis and psilocybin. This was different. I forgot where, who, and what I was. I can't even describe what I saw, but it was like... I don't think I can describe it because space and time didn't quite do normal things, if that makes any sense. I remember being pulled and swaying back and forth while splitting up into "slices" in unison with other objects, which I knew somehow to be objects like the coffee table and my purse, but they became different-looking, this weird landscape... and I remember feeling kind of brushlike somehow, and branchey, and everything else being that way too, and having an impression of being made of something like a stick-and-ball model of a complex macromolecule. Except all at the same time somehow. It felt terribly familiar and real, as if I'd been there before, or even always been there, and I remember an impression similar to a distant but important childhood memory. I didn't remember that I was tripping; when I started to phase back into reality (things that had unravelled... and everything was one and the same, without seperation... like this one giant manifold, some kind of extra-dimensional Reimann surface sort of thing... things came back together), I was perplexed that my momentary other reality had been the result of salvia, and the sudden remembering of my self and of consensus reality was a bit jarring. Some people have described the Salvia experience as like becoming a plant, and I can definitely see that. At any rate, my consciousness itself was completely dissociated from other aspects of my "self", like normal perception of consensus reality and even memories of my own past and identity. It was almost like pure being, a sort of sudden moksha. Do I believe something supernatural happened? No. But I think this plant could provide unprecedented insight into how the brain works and the mechanisms by which information is synthesized into what is perceived as existence and experience. Salvia gave me a subjective experience of an entirely differently organized kind of consciousness. Obviously, normal cognition, perception, and self-identity are largely neurological processes that can be severely fucked with to yield a completely different experience of being.
Way to just make shit up and not, you know, cite things, or provide evidence, or use peer-reviewed legitimate source material.
This was kind of interesting, though. Not indicative of plants being conscious, however; it would seem to be more of a stimulus-response kind of thing. It's amazing how much living organisms can do without being "conscious", which makes it even more remarkable that humans should be conscious at all.
Why the sudden interest in botany? Well, I tried Salvia, and had a stronger trip than anyone else I know who tried it did. I can't even describe it. For those who don't know, Salvia divinorum is a species of sage plant used historically by the Mazatec people of the Oaxaca region of Mexico. It's distinct from other common psychedelics, such as LSD, mescaline, and psilocybin, in that it does not contain alkaloids, but rather, is a kappa-opioid receptor agonist. As its odd chemistry would suggest, it's unlike anything else I've ever tried ever, and I've had interesting and vivid experiences involving cannabis and psilocybin. This was different. I forgot where, who, and what I was. I can't even describe what I saw, but it was like... I don't think I can describe it because space and time didn't quite do normal things, if that makes any sense. I remember being pulled and swaying back and forth while splitting up into "slices" in unison with other objects, which I knew somehow to be objects like the coffee table and my purse, but they became different-looking, this weird landscape... and I remember feeling kind of brushlike somehow, and branchey, and everything else being that way too, and having an impression of being made of something like a stick-and-ball model of a complex macromolecule. Except all at the same time somehow. It felt terribly familiar and real, as if I'd been there before, or even always been there, and I remember an impression similar to a distant but important childhood memory. I didn't remember that I was tripping; when I started to phase back into reality (things that had unravelled... and everything was one and the same, without seperation... like this one giant manifold, some kind of extra-dimensional Reimann surface sort of thing... things came back together), I was perplexed that my momentary other reality had been the result of salvia, and the sudden remembering of my self and of consensus reality was a bit jarring. Some people have described the Salvia experience as like becoming a plant, and I can definitely see that. At any rate, my consciousness itself was completely dissociated from other aspects of my "self", like normal perception of consensus reality and even memories of my own past and identity. It was almost like pure being, a sort of sudden moksha. Do I believe something supernatural happened? No. But I think this plant could provide unprecedented insight into how the brain works and the mechanisms by which information is synthesized into what is perceived as existence and experience. Salvia gave me a subjective experience of an entirely differently organized kind of consciousness. Obviously, normal cognition, perception, and self-identity are largely neurological processes that can be severely fucked with to yield a completely different experience of being.