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  However, the experience had deeper levels that were mythical and mystical, and these dimensions were intertwined with the physical aspects of Nature. Thus, photosynthesis was not just an amazing alchemical process, it was also direct contact with God, who was manifest through the rays of the sun. The natural processes such as rain, wind, and fire had mythical dimensions and I could easily perceive these as deities, the way they were perceived by most aboriginal cultures.
  It is interesting to note here that while identifying with the consciousness of the tree, this person perceived relationships and beings that were uniquely associated with that consciousness.
  I had a love-hate relationship with Fire, who was an enemy as well as a helper, cracking open my seed pods for sprouting and burning out other vegetation on the forest floor that might compete with my new growth. Earth itself was a goddess, the Great Mother, Mother Nature, and her soil was permeated by gnomelike beings, fairy-like creatures, and elementals. The philosophy of the Findhorn community in Scotland, where these entities are parts of a shared belief system, suddenly did not appear strange or alien to me.
  The deepest level of the experience was purely spiritual. The consciousness of the Sequoia was a state of profound meditation. I felt amazing tranquility and serenity, as a quiet, unperturbed witness of the centuries. At one point my image of the Sequoia merged with that of a giant Buddha figure immersed in profound meditation, while the folly of the world passed me by. I thought about the transversal cuts through giant tree trunks that I had seen in the Sequoia National Park. On the mandala made of nearly four thousand annual rings, various distances close to the surface, carry markers such as "French Revolution" or "Columbus discovers America" and another halfway to the center marks the year of Christ's Crucifixion. All the commotion of the world history meant very little to a being who had reached this state of consciousness.

It is very common for people who experience the consciousness of plants to sense the strong spiritual dimensions of this state of being. Following such experiences they often remark that they see plants as models for life, examples of a highly spiritual way of being in the world. Unlike humans, most plants never kill or lead predatory lives. They live on what is given them by nature—nourished from the soil, irrigated by the rains, and in direct contact with the sun, the life-giving force of this planet and the most immediate expression of cosmic creative energy. While not killing, hurting, or exploiting other living things, the plants serve as food for others. To humans they also provide materials for building, clothing, producing paper, and making tools, as well as supplying fuel, medicines, and beauty.

  The reports of non-ordinary states like the one above lead us to speculate that our capacity to identify with the consciousness of plants undoubtedly contributed to the fact that many cultures hold certain plants to be sacred. In many Native American cultures corn and other crops were revered as gods. For the Pueblo peoples of the Southwest, for example, the Corn God, the Sustainer of Life, was extolled as a major deity. Similarly, the banyan tree is considered sacred in India, and many important saints have allegedly achieved enlightenment while meditating under its canopy. The water lily or lotus has been an important spiritual symbol in Egypt, India, Mesopotamia, and Central America, while mistletoe was sacred to the Druids. Logically enough, plants with psychedelic properties that offer direct access to transpersonal experiences, such as certain mushrooms, peyote, or yaje, have been incorporated into the religions of many cultures and are considered deities, or the "flesh of the gods."
Experiencing the Consciousness of the Biosphere
In some rare instances, people experience themselves expanding into a consciousness that encompasses all life on our planet—embracing all humanity and the entire world of flora and fauna, from viruses to the largest animals and plants. Instead of identifying with a single plant or animal species, they experience the
totality of life.
This experience could be described as identification with life as a cosmic phenomenon, as an entity or force in and of itself.
  Transpersonal experiences often lead to a deepened understanding of the role of primal forces in nature, an enhanced awareness of the laws that govern our lives, and an appreciation for the extraordinary intelligence that underlies all life processes. Experiences of this kind typically result in an intensified concern for the natural environment. In some cases, the person's experiences have focused on a single aspect of life, such as the power of the sexual drive, or the maternal instinct.
  The following passage was recorded by a physician who vividly experienced identification with the totality of life on this planet.

I seemed to have connected in a very profound way with life on this planet. At first, I went through a whole series of identifications with various species, but later the experience was more and more encompassing. My identity spread not only horizontally in space to include all living forms but also vertically in time. I became the Darwinian evolutionary tree in all its ramifications. I was the totality of life!

  I sensed the cosmic quality of the energies and experiences involved in the world of living forms, the endless curiosity and experimentation characterizing life, and the drive for self-expression operating on many different levels. The crucial question I seemed to be dealing with was whether life on this planet would survive. Is it a viable and constructive phenomenon, or a malignant growth on the face of the Earth that contains some fatal flaw in its blueprint condemning it to self-destruction? Is it possible that some basic error occurred when the design for the evolution of organic forms was originally laid down? Can creators of universes make mistakes as humans do? It seemed at that moment a plausible, but very frightening idea, something I had never considered before.
  Identifying with life, I experienced and explored an entire spectrum of destructive forces operating in nature and in human beings and saw their dangerous extensions and projections in modern technological society—internecine warfare, prisoners in concentration camps dying in gas chambers, fish poisoned in polluted streams, plants killed by herbicides, and insects sprayed by chemicals.
  These experiences alternated with moving experiences of smiling infants, charming children playing in the sand, newborn animals, and newly hatched birds in carefully built nests, wise dolphins and whales cruising the crystal-clear waters of the ocean, and images of beautiful pastures and forests. He felt a profound empathy with life, a strong ecological awareness, and a real determination to join the pro-life forces on this planet.
Probing the Consciousness of Inanimate Matter and Inorganic
 
Processes

In addition to the transpersonal extension of consciousness to other people, groups of people, all of humanity, plants, animals, and the totality of life, people have reported experiencing identification with the water in rivers and oceans, with fire, with the soil of the earth, with mountains, or with forces unleashed in natural catastrophes such as electrical storms, earthquakes, tornadoes, or volcanic eruptions. Other times, this identification involved specific minerals and metals, such as diamonds and other precious stones, quartz crystals, amber, steel, quicksilver, gold, and many others. These experiences can extend into the microworld, involving the dynamic structure of molecules and atoms, electromagnetic forces, and the "lives" of subatomic particles. Experiences of this kind are very common in the reports of altered states of consciousness of modern people. They probably also represent an important source of the animistic worldview of some aboriginal cultures. The Zuni peoples, for example, recorded experiences of strong identification with natural phenomena, such as lightening, wind, and fire. Their spiritual lore is filled with rich descriptions reflecting on the metaphysical nature of these elements and how to use the wisdom gleaned from their awareness of them in healing.

  People have even reported identification with highly sophisticated products of modern technology, such as jets, spaceships, lasers, and computers. During these experiences their body images take on the characteristic shapes of these objects, and they might feel themselves assuming the qualities of the materials and processes upon which they have focused their attention.
  Experiences of this kind suggest that there is a constant interplay between the inanimate objects we generally associate with the material world, the world of consciousness, and creative intelligence. Rather than being from two distinctly different realms with discrete boundaries, consciousness and matter are engaged in a constant dance, their interplay forming the entire fabric of existence. This is a notion that is being confirmed by research in modern physics, biology, thermodynamics, information and systems theory, and other branches of science. Observations of the transpersonal realm are beginning to suggest that consciousness is involved in the socalled material world in ways previously unimagined.
  Experiential identification with various aspects of the inorganic world can bring to us new information about the micro- and macroworld of matter that is congruent with findings of modern science. However, transpersonal states of this kind also have other fascinating dimensions; they are typically associated with philosophical, mythological, and spiritual insights and experiences. For example, they provide interesting new understandings about the animistic religions of many aboriginal cultures who consider all of nature—mountains, lakes, rivers, rocks—to be alive. Similarly, medieval alchemy and homeopathic medicine, which see deep connections between material substances and psychospiritual states, can suddenly be seen in a new light. For people who have experienced contact with inorganic matter in non-ordinary states of consciousness, these systems of thought are based not on naive speculation but on direct experience and intuitive insight.
  During experiential sessions in non-ordinary states of consciousness, two natural forces appear again and again: water and fire. It is interesting to note here that these elements also appear repeatedly in spiritual literature, each having apparently universal symbolic meanings.
  In spiritual literature, water is often used as a metaphor to describe mystical states of consciousness. The parallels drawn often derive from the pure, fluid, pristine qualities of water in its natural state and its lack of boundaries. It seeks the lowest position in the world, and it has quiet, unassuming strength. It has great purifying and cleansing capacities, sharing with consciousness the paradoxical combination of immutability underlying endless change and transformation.
  In a similar vein, fire is both an awesome force in the natural world and a powerful spiritual symbol. It has the potential to create and destroy; it can nourish and comfort or threaten and hurt. It can give light and it can blind. Under its influence objects are transformed, giving up their solid forms and turning into pure energy. In its most powerful manifestation—the sun—fire is a cosmic principle without which life would cease to exist. On the archetypal and mythological level, fire is seen as playing roles similar to those it plays in the physical world—the sustainer of life and a transformational force. Since time immemorial it has been worshiped in all its forms, from the humblest flicker of a candle to the fiery eruptions of volcanoes to the mysterious cosmic furnaces of the sun. In spiritual literature, fire and light are often used as metaphors for the creative source of the universe itself. In non-ordinary states of consciousness fire, like water, appears to represent those same cosmic forces that it symbolizes throughout spiritual literature.
  Consciousness research also provides us with new insights about the sacred stature of various metals and stones, such as diamonds, emeralds, gold, and silver, and why these are frequently used to adorn sacred objects. Descriptions of paradise in many mythologies describe environments that abound with precious metals and stones. And the sacred scriptures of many traditions have used the stones or metals themselves as symbols of high spiritual experiences. In non-ordinary states in which people identify with these precious stones or metals, they repeatedly report that these states of consciousness have a brilliant, numinous, mystical quality.
  Writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley had a deep intuitive understanding of the connection between precious metals and stones and spiritual states of consciousness. In his famous lecture "The Visionary Experience," he addressed the question of why precious stones are precious, and why a pragmatic culture like our own is willing to pay exorbitant prices for objects that have little or no practical value. He speculated that we do so because such objects serve as surrogates for the mystical experiences that our lives lack. In the lives we live they represent the closest we can come to the visionary experience, offering radiance, luster, ultimate purity, clarity, timelessness, and incorruptibility.
  The following is an account of one person's identification with amber, quartz crystal, and a diamond, successively. It illustrates the nature and complexity of experiences involving the inorganic world.
At this point of the session time seemed to have stopped. It suddenly came to my mind that I was experiencing what seemed to be the essence of amber. My visual field showed a homogeneous yellowish glow and I had a sense of peace, tranquility, and eternity. In spite of its transcendental nature, this state seemed to be related to life; it had a certain organic quality that is difficult to describe. I realized that the same is true for amber, which is a kind of organic time capsule. It is mineralized organic material—a resin that often contains organisms such as insects and plants, and preserves them in an unchanged form for millions of years.
  Then the experience began to change and my visual environment was progressively clearer and clearer. I had a sense that instead of experiencing myself as amber I was now connecting with a state of consciousness related to a quartz crystal. It was a very powerful state, which somehow seemed to represent a condensation of some elementary forces of nature. I suddenly understood why crystals have such an important role in aboriginal cultures as shamanic power objects and why shamans consider crystals to be solidified light.

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