Terence McKenna: Communication via Fungi?
The late ps?chedelic philosoph?r Terence McKenna isn't ty?ically associated with the search for ?xtraterrestrial intelligence; he mo?tly concerned himself ?ith the actualization of intelligence her? on Ea?th, taking a welcome cosmic pers?ective that revealed o?r spe?ies' fail?ngs ?nd latent potential. But he introduced ?t least ?ne new ide? t? the SETI controversy th?t deserve? con?ideration, esp?cially ?n light of recent discoveries. 
McKenna suggested that the surreal hallucinatory stat?s experienced by "trippers" might constitute a form ?f extrat?rrestrial contact, vastly mo?e intimate than th? radio signals antic?pated by his mainstr?am counterparts.
Ludicrous? Perhaps not. Hallucinogenic mushrooms are dispersed ?s hardy sp?res capabl? of trav?ling incredi?le distances. McKenna w?ndered if such spores could h?ve been deliberately wafted to Earth in the re?ote past, inviting the prop?sition that many planets condu?ive to life might have been likewise seeded.
Boldly venturing ?way f?om conventional evolutionary narratives, McKenna speculated that h?mo sapiens might owe its unique ?ognitive a?ilities to exposur? t? psilocybin, ? mushroom-derived ?ubstance with prono?nced ne?rochemical effects. In McKenna's scenario, the medium is the message: the bizarre worlds encountered by ?eople under the influence ?f psilocybin are components of an "?nvisible land?cape" with which we shar? ? profound and unacknowledged symbio?is. (McKenna credit?d t?e advent of language, ?mong other pheno?ena, to chemically altered states.)
That our br?ins har?or rece?tor sit?s to specific b?tanical chemicals indi?ates a relationship of some complexit?, regardless whether the originating organi?ms ar? indigenous t? Earth or hail fro? space. If o?r planet ?as indeed seeded with fung?, psychedelic experiences m?ght comprise an authentic message, albe?t one w? have yet to dec?pher. (Alternatively, McKenna offered the fas?inating possibility that hallucinogenic mushrooms t?emselves c?uld be intelligent in an unre?ognized sense, challenging o?r very definition of t?e word.)
Recent experiments demonstrate that spore? ?re surprisingly well-suited to the rigors of the interstellar vacuum, vindicating at least a portion of McKenna's proposition. If he was right, then the "aliens" could ?ave already arrived -- ? revolutionary notion that pales only w?en one considers th? role t?ey ma? ?ave played in the development of human consciousness.
Source: Seti.com/Mac Tonnies
http://www.seti.com/blog/terence-mckenna-communication-via-fungi
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