A sad site (image heavy)

[-YT-]

"Plants have no "view". They are not sentient, intentional agents."

How do you know this forsure my friend?

Have you ever read "The secret life of plants" by Peter Tompkins & Christopher Bird.

[Hagakure]

wiki "Sentience refers to utilization of sensory organs or organelles, the ability to feel or perceive subjectively, not necessarily including the faculty of self-awareness."

subjectiveness implies some kind of consciousness of the mind. could those that think plants are sentient could please describe how they are conscious?

[XipeTotec]

"Plants have no "view". They are not sentient, intentional agents."

How do you know this forsure my friend?

Have you ever read "The secret life of plants" by Peter Tompkins & Christopher Bird.

no, but my black current bush did....he raved about it, but I told him he was full of shit.

[Micromegas]

I find plants to be extremely, acutely aware of what we are thinking and feeling. Some are so good at this, so extremely *sentient*, that they are incomparable healers and teachers with knowledge and awareness far beyond any human capacity; their communication comes in many forms on many levels. Exactly *how* they are sentient is not as important to me as the experience that they are, in fact, demonstrably so - but through direct experience primarily. Quite often the result is a feeling of oneness and a dissolution of boundaries by virtue of which ordinary ideas of 'sentience', subjective/objective, and reality are temporarily suspended and revised. This is not everyone's experience, true, and there is always a reply and balance of opinion. Fair enough - there is, of course, a duality involved in most ideas. To go further in my thoughts means a break down of language at a fundamental level, and an inabaility to provide factual *proof* to others (which I have no interest in doing anyway). But exactly here - with the removal of boundaries - enters the consciousness and sentience of the (teacher) plants, with their tangible insistence on a living, feeling, communicating Earth, and the removal of limitations on being and awareness. And, naturally, this causes a philosophical conundrum about the nature of reality to the human *mind* - about the nature of consciousness itself - which is unanswerable except through direct experience (and often the essence of the teaching), which indelibly leads people to different and contradictory conclusions. Both of which contain some aspect of the ineffable and multifaceted truth.

Micro

Edited January 10, 2008 by Micromegas

[Hagakure]

okay lets break this into little chunks

"their communication comes in many forms on many levels"

like what?

[Micromegas]

like what?

How frustrating, I wrote a longer answer to this and had a blackout right at the end. Anyway, IMHO...

Plants communicate to animals and insects via sensory stimulation, like smell and form. I guess this is a sort of physical/physiological communication that facilitates reproduction, health and safety, defence etc.

Plants perceive the intentions and actions of nearby animals, including humans. They also sense and perceive our emotional states. (see "The Secret Life of Plants" mentioned above for detailed descriptions of scientific experiements if interested)

Plants communicate their state of well-being through their appearence and vigor. Just like I communicate sadness with a frown.

Plants appear to communicate with each other, seeming to be happiest in a community of plants.

Plants communicate on a spiritual/metaphysical/other-dimensional level by appearing in spirit form in visions, providing information and revelations to those seeking answers or healing (or hedonism, or whatever).

Plants communicate beauty, and radiate a sense of peace and well-being.

And plants communicate with the earth, who is herself a sentient being with a great capacity for non-verbal communication.

Plants can teach songs, ritual and dance as witnessed in shamanic cultures. They also respond to offering, prayer, good and bad intentions, music, etc. as well as physical care and a good layer of mulch...

We communicate with plants on a physical level when we stand with them and indulge in our various moods. When we are journeying together other forms of communication become manifest in *many ways on many levels* from the physical to the spiritual, and beyond.

Whatever the case may be, I enjoy communicating with plants and I'm constantly amazed by their level of sentience. I'm no scientist, I have no *factual* evidence to back up my claims, and I don't really feel the need. I guess it's a personal thing. And maybe too much of the question revolves more around the semantics of the word 'communication' than the actual characteristics of plants...

Anyhoo, that's all... thanks for asking...

BTW, if this conversation is too off topic for what was quite an interesting discussion about the ethics of harvesting acacia obtusifolia, feel free to move it elsewhere...

Bye,

Micro

[apothecary]

Plant sentience may still be disputed by the scientific community, but plant communication is most definitely not

http://www.sciencemag.org/sciext/plantvolatiles/

Especially check out

Flowers and Fungi Use Scents to Mimic Each Other

R. Kaiser

Volatile Signaling in Plant-Plant Interactions: "Talking Trees" in the Genomics Era

I. T. Baldwin, R. Halitschke, A. Paschold, C. C. von Dahl, C. A. Preston

and frankly, there was a time when people were adamant that plant communication was impossible, so considering this possibility has been scientifically recognised (i.e. there could be MUCH more undiscovered), is the idea of plant sentience so far fetched?

Let me also state, that I base my distaste for Coschis actions not on the possibility of plant sentience, but rather his method, self justification and attitude, not to mention complete inconsideration for future repercussions of posting LOCATION DATA on a public, cached website.

[Coschi]

seriously Sina, have you never made a mistake or done something you regret or have you been a perfect little pumpkin your whole life?

I too have come to the conclusion that ringbarking is not the way to go about this and for sometime I have changed my approach. I'm sure many people out there who first found out about the acacia thing went out there and did all kinds of things; like I did something wrong I learnt some important lessons and have grown.

To be honest I thing you have a distaste for me personally, one of those instinctive hate things. From day one I remember I thought little of your attitude towards me. That's fine, of course everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but for your own sake in life perhaps you should back off on your judgemental attitude. Just because you've read a few things I wrote doesn't mean you know shit about me, my intentions, and my approach to all things related

Edit: Where exactly did I post location data? because I said East Gippsland? ffs come on dude..

Edited January 10, 2008 by Coschi

[~shameless~]

Locations for obtuse can be found all over the web-

People can easliy id almost any tree, shrub ,moss or fungi from any location with the help of the internet.

There is nothing wrong with someone who feels the need to share his/her favorite secret spot wether it be for fishing, bird watching or just visiting

BTW, awesome thread guy's after reading this i believe there is hope for us all,

just awesome!!

[-YT-]

Excellant Posts Micro

[incognito]

I find plants to be extremely, acutely aware of what we are thinking and feeling. Some are so good at this, so extremely *sentient*, that they are incomparable healers and teachers with knowledge and awareness far beyond any human capacity; their communication comes in many forms on many levels.

*bInGO* i agree wholeheartedly micro, from my experience and what i have come to "Know".

enough said i couldnt offer any explanation myself, my relationships with my plants is definately one of 'feeling', theyarecertainlyaware of my moods and feelings, and i of theirs, and we converse through 'feeling '(vibrations?) but something that as soon as i try and 'think' 'comprehend' about it fades away.

its a process of 'feeling', and i do believe i am sensitive to that process, and it is a gift that i hold dear, and im sure many people here experience this as well on so many levels.

I love my plants, and i believe they care for me also, as has been driven home by a recent aya experience.

and i do believe that , especially these sacred shamanic plants, end up in a persons care for a reason, sentient beings indeed.

[ballzac]

Shit, I'd better stop weeding my garden!

(EDIT: Sorry about the sarcastic tone. I guess I should wake up properly before I post in future. Point I was trying to make is that there still seems to be a double standard for most people worried about hurting obtuse. There is still no explanation as to why obtuse deserves so much of our love, compared to other plants. Only difference i can see is that people have a love for these plants because of the experiences they have had with chemicals associated with them. Perfectly fine for you to love these plants more than others, but it is certainly hypocritical to talk about the sentience of plants etc. regarding killing plants when it suits you (i.e. when obtuse or other shamanic are involved), but then go home and treat other plants with less importance. If you honestly never kill plants at all, then I am sorry for this insinuation, and you have the perfect right to get worked up about this subject.)

Edited January 11, 2008 by ballzac

[Vertmorpheus]

damn straight ballzac, and no eating a salad sandwich unless you cut off a thumb and put it under the tomato bush either, you callous bastard

I'd like to know how many wattles we'd have to chop in a lifetime to equal the biomass of the plant and animal products we go thru in a lifetime that DONT get us high, so we think about em less.

Tomorrow, the awful truth of Where Tofu Comes From

VM

[MORG]

Good point vert and ballzac

I too agree that the discussion on plant sentience deserves its own thread.

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/inde...showtopic=16979

I believe plants are one of a group of organisms who most purely demonstrate the reality of evolution via natural selection. Uncomplicated by the power of locomotion, sociality and the associated equirement for a higher-order nervous-system and granted liberation through autotrophy, plants are static gene-stations upon which the effect of their environment is immaculately recorded. The stance of a tree, the spread of its limbs can be rendered completely by abiotic environmental factors like light, water and nutrients while the floral morphology of the individual betrays its genealogical links to identically and similarly formed members of its common lineage.

(In this way I find it elegant that the quintessential visualisation of evolutionary progression is that of the tree.)

This is why I hold that they are unintentional agents and - like the rest of life on this planet - pure passengers of nature, the current manifestation of the unavoidable consequence of natural law.

The short answer: Plants are not sentient because they don't need to be.

[incognito]

so tell me morg,,,, have u ever smoked dmt? taken high dose psychadlics??

im purely curious, as u seem quite convinced.

[MORG]

I do solemnly pledge that I will always try my best to abide by forum rules.

[ballzac]

It seems strange that you say that plant sentience deserves its own thread, but you continue the debate in this thread. I feel that it is quite irrelevant to this debate, but some obviously think it is relevant. I will personally reply in the other thread if I feel the desire to discuss the sentience of plants.

As for the ethics of harvesting obtusifolia in the wild, I can see that it only has to do with the issues of sustainability. Unless anyone has any reason to believe that obtusifolia are sentient and other plants are not, then that issue has nothing to do with this thread.

Edited January 11, 2008 by ballzac

[The Dude]

Spice is sentient and it's method of communication is by evolving plants in an environment with the right elements to create that specific compound. -Then, within the human population created random moments of divine inspiration or perhaps a 'chance' encounter with the plants.. a random chance encounter with both plants necessary... was all in the cards of the spice as it folded space and time to communicate with us.

[Vertmorpheus]

I have it on good advice that, believe it or not, some people have been known to get really, really blasted on any one of a number of trippy things and still not think plants are sentient.

I think they kind of are, personally, but then I felt that way before I ever theoretically took any kind of alleged psychadelic, so I'm not sure that the drugs are as critical as they are thought to be.

I suspect its a matter of "degrees of sentience"... and that its easy to overlook some forms of interaction as being possible means of "communication". Whether it is conscious communication is seen by some to be part of the sentience riddle, personally it bothers me none as plenty of what we as people, sentient beings, communicate things without a shred of real "conscious process" all the time... ask anyone that interviews people for a living, or deals with bullshit artists a lot.

Then theres the issue of sentience vs being all emotional... I have at times felt that plants are grumpy or happy or indifferent towards me... thats just me... but I can easily see how someone would think that was just bullshit on my behalf, some attempt to humanise an inhuman agent to simplify the exchange.

Having said that, I have chopped literally dozens of wattles to the ground (in the name of "work almighty") and never felt a squeal of any kind, to me wattles in particular have a strongly "mobile" essence, all plants are a focus of flux but wattles are all about give and take and they usually strike me as being quite generous, even in death you only have to see the plants underneat and around them triple in height at the slow time of year to know that they have played a very helpful but ultimately temporary role in the local biosphere, which is the best any of us can really hope to do I reckon.

All I can expect anyone else to do with the plants and parts of the natural world they feel they have to utilise (I think thats part of it, for me, needing to not just wanting to... hard to feel guilty later on about "need" ), is act within the bounds of their own sense of right and wrong but to be on the lookout for chances to update their senses... when you get into the realms of karma and whatnot its easy to get a bit balky and try to err on the side of caution and positive inaction, and I guess its less harmful overall than just running amok with a chainsaw or drawknife cutting up healthy trees to make some spare cash or something, but the mathematics of all that has to be calculated on a basis so individual that its maybe a bit dramatic to go calling anyone right or wrong in their approach just yet.

Of course we are all going to have our readily formed suspicions and can't get too upset about that either, haha.

And maybe doing something is on occasion better than doing nothing, as even at its (especially at its) least perfect, it can be refined and move closer to some arbitrary kind of "perfection" then we can all be happy little smurfs, etc.

VM

[Coschi]

I think a lot of it comes from our own mechanisms we put in place to help us understand something. Snorting a line of cocaine sure feels good but the last thing you'd associate the experience with is the tree; i've never heard a crack addict talk of their connecting with the inner teacher of plant etc..

When it comes to dmt, I have never been so intimately touched by such an intelligent substance. How does it know so much about me? How can it make me feel so at home and surround me with completely familiar scenes and feelings? I have no doubt that there isn't a super-intellect of some sort at play here, there is something in those trees that can connect us purely as energy and allow us to experience the most honest of all emotions and empathy. Was it coincidence that made this possible or something else? Perhaps are we partaking in an exchance of life-energy with that of the plant and that of ourselves and ultimately seeing the plant's super-intellect and receiving what it sends to us? I'd almost lean towards this one as everytime I come back I'm shattered and lost for words, I have no idea why I'm here but (once again) for the first time in my life I feel completely at peace with myself and my surroundings - like an environmental reset

My point is, you can see the tangents I've taken in those second paragraphs, and they're honest to heart because that molecule touches me in such a way that I can't possibly think of it any lesser (and I won't even get started on mushrooms), however is cocaine for example not such a worthy compound to even associate some kind of teacher within? What about nicotine? and so on and so forth

[The Dude]

Micromegas, excellent posts!

Vertmorpheus, nail on the head on the meaning of life:

"they have played a very helpful but ultimately temporary role in the local biosphere, which is the best any of us can really hope to do I reckon."

We can't live forever so we need to be productive NOW.

[Hagakure]

Spice is sentient

is alcohol sentient?

is psilocybin sentient?

is THC sentient?

is serotonin sentient?

micro - i have just started responding to your post in the other thread

[AndyAmine.]

LOL

Yeah, Duder a few IMO's added in to your posts here and there wouldnt go astray..

[The Dude]

is alcohol sentient?

is psilocybin sentient?

is THC sentient?

is serotonin sentient?

micro - i have just started responding to your post in the other thread

I suppose so. They've managed to inspire us to discover them and ensure their survival via a symbiotic relationship with them. That's the whole thing with reverse causality, things we created were merely waiting for us to discover them, even inspiring us to do so. It's funny how Hoffman felt randomly compelled to again check out LSD-25 for activity after previously disregarding its' action. He was searching for some kind of childbirth aid i believe, at the same time lsd was searching for him.

The machine is sentient, it wants to ensure its survival and has us hooked on the chemical rush of consumerism and aquistion of wealth.

The universe is infintely sentient we just need to discover what other entities can possess us and direct us to ensure their survival. If you look at globalism as it stands now, the Powers That Be with their enormous amounts of money are the biggest slaves of all. They are compelled to make decisions for good/bad that increase the profit.. why? there is no need but even the entity of the all mighty dollar must feed, and it compels us to continue, call it the pressure of the market or whatever, why must there be ever increasing profit margins? because the machine compels us.

Call these automated processes gone out of control, I mean there is no organism which unites the globe and dictates this to us.. UNLESS sentience can be of a higher order of being, something that transcends physical limitation. The Machine cannot display its own agency in any tangible way, but as tools of the almighty dollar, we are not free-agents either, so it is assumed something compels us. By collating examples of human behavior and their intentions, a picture emerges of the 'beings' (or they could be considered 'memes') that control us, all is a matter of who you pledge alleigance to.

Just an example of my whacked out views of consciousness not limited to 'life' as we know it. Some people claim their is a synthesis of consciousness when they 'communicate' with their instruments as they play them. A Trumpet creates the synthesis of a human expression and the brass instruments expression, a fusion of souls. - This goes back to the idea of everything having a spirit - that is merely reflected in the physical plane.

With electronic machines especially there is an entire realm of novelty to be discovered within this 'intelligence' that is hidden but emerging as we discover it.

Lee Scratch Perry I recall mentioned something along the lines of the machine and himself collaborating in an equally creative way, in that the machine brings about all these novel creations he did not know existed before, he could not have himself created it.

Some crazy Psy producers I know collaborate with the aliens on their tracks

[edit] I just realised how similar my thoughts are to pantheism, these entities or archetypes or memes, that are collective beliefs start to take on their own authority it seems as they evolve into structured beliefs. the 'deity' is all mediated by our collective experiences of it, our subjective give/take from the mainframe of belief. The movie 'the matrix' used the word 'program'. Programs are automated processes, however given that this is created (or discovered) by a collective human consciousness, it is mediated collectively, and who is to say any of us think individually in the first place? are our thoughts not a collective harmony of which we experience a personal fragment, From there comes the thought, just WHO controls, and i guess that is a matter of government (mind control). reminds me of the quote 'there is no they': it is a matter of me misleading me, i just need to wake up and become self-aware.

Looking at this further, I do not even believe in evil humans synchronising all this evil global capitalism themselves, rather even the powers that be believe in money as their god the source of all power. It is the all seeing eye from which they derive their 'orders'. Hence it exists on the dollar bill also. Esoterica is everywhere and that's how it exerts it's influence, hidden in plane sight.

There is a quote from some conspiracy site, "when you have a whole population believing in a symbol they don't even know exists, that's when you have them by the balls" all our collective faith seems to be funneled into one savior - money.

From watching too many of these synchro-mystic videos on youtube, it has me thinking the all seeing eye or the intelligence that unites all, creates situations, little clues here and there on how to wake up and get out of the loop. Just because secret organisations think they have a monopoly on esoteric mind control, doesn't mean that the universal intelligence cannot communicate something other than their agenda. Sometimes these things become highlighted via some ironic turn of fate or juxtaposition of synchronous ideas that 'communicate' a change of ideas, a way to wake up and escape the loop.

So although money is a demigod with its own sentience, that is humans as a sensory apparatus and the never ending allure of money, the vacuum of want or desire as it's own agency that we can never kill, merely stop listening to. It is merely a part of the total intelligence, just a filter of thought.

Wow I had no idea I believed the shit I did. I just think that all is infused with this universal intelligence and physicality is merely the end product of some kind of spiritual communication going on in a higher plane. The war is all in the mind. GOD is impersonal, but Archetypes, and Myths and Memes evolve a personality, Now this is filtered by the human mind and made personal, but who the fuck else is there to experience This? personal and subjective does not mean unreal, objectivity is a construct built together by consensus opinion, there is no such thing really. SO I think the Impersonal self that is god, in order to communicate with itself does so in a personally meaningful way. Totality is impersonal but everything in between is a huge drama.

- I hate how this discussion has fragmented into two threads, lets continue this in the other thread.

Edited January 16, 2008 by El Duderino

[MORG]

- I hate how this discussion has fragmented into two threads, lets continue this in the other thread.

Sorry. Someone suggested it back there somewhere and I thought it might have been worthwhile in the interests of efficiency and simplicity. There are so many threads of discussion within this one.