Planetary Matrix (Tek-Gnostics Heresies excerpt)

“As a boy, I once rolled dice in an empty house…

playing against myself.

I suppose I was afraid. It was twilight, and I forget who won.

I was too young to have known that

the old abandoned house in which I played… was the universe.

I would play for man more fiercely…

if the years would take me back.”

- Loren Eiseley

Part One - Earth Matrix
The Greek philosopher, Aristotle said that man is by nature a social animal. As social beings, it is inherent within us to communicate. As tool builders, it is also within our nature to create and manipulate artifacts. To date, the world-wide-web is arguably one of humanity’s most ingenious and ambitious artifacts. It is nothing less than a vast working model of global consciousness. Each human with the means (computer, tablet, mobile, etc.) to connect to the web becomes, in a sense, a single, autonomous neuron in the global mind of Gaia, our home-world. Given the incredible creative potential, each individual earthling brings to this system, the possibilities for our global consciousness artifact are seemingly infinite.

As this global nerve-net becomes more complex and sophisticated, our evolving technologies have accelerated in their sophistication and complexity. Indeed, our terrestrial and satellite communications network encompasses the Earth in such a way as to be as integral to Earth’s functioning as one of her atmospheres. This information network or “infosphere” further deepens humanity’s potential within Gaia’s sentient life support systems.

The timely emergence of this so-called infosphere, may indicate that it is a natural, organic development of Gaia’s nervous system. If Earth’s environmental systems act as her autonomic nervous system, perhaps humanity and our artifacts, act as her conscious, somatic nervous system. Perhaps we serve as Gaia’s expanding and evolving nerve-net. Regardless, our infosphere appears to be on the brink of exponential expansion again, facilitated by what we have come to call… technological singularity.

If the singularity event is a culminating working model of global consciousness, this model intricately facilitates humanity’s evolutionary (paranormal) growth. Like any model, it helps us envision and assists us in transition into an awakened tek/human partnership. The model shows us how a man/machine system will work. Thus humanity and our artifacts evolve in tandem into the “century of singularity” as an amalgam of communicative intelligence.

Indeed, the singularity may be seen as an awakening of our collective communicative abilities. A partnership of artificial intelligence, as achieved through the networked, intelligence augmented path, with an evolving, paranormal humanity, becomes an amazingly powerful intelligence entity. Again, perhaps the timely marriage of man and machine is by design. Perhaps this is all “part of the plan.” As our technologies are an integral part of us, so too may what we have termed singularity, become an integral part of Gaia.

If we hypothesize that humanity acts as Gaia’s self-reflective faculty… if we act as an organic instrument of self-consciousness, it follows that we facilitate Gaia’s ability to think about Herself. The human collective, as global consciousness, allows our Mother Earth to pause and reflect… to be self aware. This “Eyes of the World” hypothesis may be expanded, by virtue of the spark of divinity within each human, to suggest that we also act as part of universe’s self-reflective spiritual sense organ. Perhaps on a much grander scale, Earth is a sleepy dendrite, about to “wake up” in a back-water corner of what we call the Milky Way Galaxy.

Within this mythology, each of us fulfill a dendritic perceptive and communicative role, for our sentient home-world. Gaia, orbiting Sol, our local star, in return fulfills a similar sentient role, as an individual within her community… the Milky Way. Our home galaxy thereby joins the universal intelligence community of galaxies, wherein Universe’s ultra-sentient persona, aka: God… pauses and thinks: “what a wondrous existence this universe is!” …wheels within wheels.

Now, within this body of work, the universe is analogous to… can be equated to… information (universe=information). Within this premise, information has a very special meaning: Information equals intelligence or coherent order. This is as distinguished from noise, which is incoherent chaos. Evolution of consciousness is the gradual emergence of information out of chaos.  This is the “lifting of the veil” or the steady increase in light… the change in focus from folly to wisdom, that the ancient Gnostics spoke of. The continuity in universe is not necessarily mere consciousness... but information… coherence. In this regard, the dualistic nature of universe can be expressed, not merely as light versus darkness, but rather: coherence versus confusion.

This mythic hypothesis would place humanity in a more profound role… as an intelligence system of Gaia, which in turn plays a role in a galactic and ultimately universal intelligence network. The mechanism whereby Gaia’s humanity-wide system sends signals… communicates… is none other than our old friend, synchronicity. Per Jung’s theory, synchronicity is acausal, in that it is affected by meaning, rather than causation. It does not appear to be limited or even effected by either space or time. This synchronistic network of communication is available everywhere and every-when at once… on a cellular level, on a human level, as well as on a galactic level. …wheels within wheels.

Returning to humanity’s planetary rise to prominence over the last 10,000 years… this may turn out to primarily be an evolutionary leap for Gaia… rather than merely a human evolution. Viewing Humanity as a sense organ of planet Earth arguably places our rapid evolution as a component of or a development of Gaia’s evolution. However, the question remains as to what was the catalyst that sparked our species’ intelligence increase?

The question brings us (back) to Terrance McKenna and what has been called his “stoned ape” hypothesis. In his 1993 book: Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge (sub-titled: A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution), McKenna proposed that the explosive evolution from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens was sparked by the addition of the mushroom psilocybe cubensis, in their diet. Per McKenna, over a timeframe of a mere 100,000 years, proto-human evolved into modern human, facilitated in part by the sustained ingestion of the psilocybin mushroom.

Following herds of wild cattle across the African savannahs, our ancestors ingested these mushrooms, scavenged from the herd’s dung piles. Over time, the psilocybin mushroom became part of early man’s (paleo!) diet. Low doses of psilocybin improve visual acuity. Thus, our ancestors, in consuming psilocybin mushrooms, became more successful hunters than those whose diet did not include the mushroom, resulting in a higher rate of reproductive success. 

In a 1992 interview in High Times Magazine, McKenna further explained…

High Times: You have a unique theory about the role that psilocybin mushrooms play in the process of human evolution. Can you tell us about this?

Terrence McKenna: Whether the mushrooms came from outer space or not, the presence of psychedelic substances in the diet of early human beings created a number of changes in our evolutionary situation. When a person takes small amounts of psilocybin visual acuity improves. They can actually see slightly better, and this means that animals allowing psilocybin into their food chain would have increased hunting success, which means increased food supply, which means increased reproductive success, which is the name of the game in evolution.

It is the organism that manages to propagate itself numerically that is successful. The presence of psilocybin in the diet of early pack-hunting primates caused the individuals that were ingesting the psilocybin to have increased visual acuity. At slightly higher doses of psilocybin there is sexual arousal, erection, and everything that goes under the term arousal of the central nervous system. Again, a factor which would increase reproductive success is reinforced.

HT: Isn’t it true that psilocybin inhibits orgasm?

TM: Not at the doses I’m talking about. At a psychedelic dose it might, but at just slightly above the “you can feel it” dose, it acts as a stimulant. Sexual arousal means paying attention, it means jumpiness, it indicates a certain energy level in the organism. And then, of course, at still higher doses psilocybin triggers this activity in the language-forming capacity of the brain that manifests as song and vision.

It is as though it is an enzyme which stimulates eyesight, sexual interest, and imagination… and the three of these going together produce language-using primates. Psilocybin may have synergized the emergence of higher forms of psychic organization out of primitive proto-human animals. It can be seen as a kind of evolutionary enzyme, or evolutionary catalyst.

(Note: In the second installment of this excerpt, we will expand and explore the Matrix concept, taking it to a galactic level.)

Planetary Matrix Part Two

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