Simon Powell - The Psilocybin Solution

Notwithstanding sullen detractors, if we embrace our River of Life metaphor, the totality of life represents the thrust of an intelligent process of information integration, and I argue that this is the essence of reality, the essence of the process that bred and killed Einstein and that controls our destiny also. Because all the information needed to support confluential patterning is etched into the “software” of the Universe, life and the emergence of consciousness can be viewed as a kind of translation whereby the code or meaning inherent in reality is read out over time. Somewhere within the reality process a biosphere had to form, since it was coded for in the lawful contextual fabric of the Universe. And within such a biosphere—of which there may be countless millions in the Universe—evolution was destined at some time to produce nervous systems and, eventually, brains capable of embodying consciousness. Patterns forever falling naturally into place like some cosmic jigsaw.

The conscious aspect of Homo sapiens thus resolves itself as a potent expression of the latest and most reflective form of information integration to emerge out of Nature—reflective because our kind is able to reflect upon how we came to be. In a real way, the human cortex is a biologically wrought mirror able to catch the true face of Nature upon its refined surface.

As with all other fluidic patterns of information, consciousness really was poised to materialize, its emergence dependent, like everything else, on the laws and forces of Nature along with prevailing contextual conditions. And so here we stand, atop the jungle and atop the technology we have created, our gaze now set on the expanding intelligible cosmos. Each human psyche, imbued with meaning from the larger context in which it has arisen, is able to wonder at the mystery of it all and even to glimpse the orchestrating intelligence in whose hands we are like transformed clay. In an instant of cosmic time, consciousness has arisen out of physics, chemistry, and biology, a living mirror able to reflect the intelligent forces that so engendered it.

The evolution of life on Earth, the gradual elaboration of the biosphere, and the emergence of conscious human culture strongly suggest that we are inside a most interesting and creative part of the Universe. It is as if one of the mightiest currents within the River of Life were flowing around us right here and right now, focused within our modern electronic culture. Indeed, if the creative center of the Universe is the place where the most elaborate kinds of information integration are taking hold, then we are surely in or near the center. Or at least we are amid one of the focal points of natural intelligence. The amount of information being organized in one way or another all around us is so dense that one can feel it. Actively flowing information bombards us at every turn as it seeks resolution. Early twenty-first century culture with its global cyberspatial network is like some effervescent protoplasm exuded by the biosphere as it seeks to attain cohesion and stability at some higher level of organization.

Those scientists who diligently propound the myth that we are mere bystanders on a speck of dust remote from the heart of the Universe clearly do the phenomena of life and consciousness a major disservice. As far as we know, in terms of informational activity, the existence of humanity (seven billion potentially interconnected minds) is far and away more complex and intriguing than anything else in the known Universe. The Earth’s biosphere, in its totality including all of human culture, is surely the place to be.

If reality is indeed a rushing river of integrating information, it might well be destined to meet some final organized form or pattern. Actually, this would appear to be an inescapable implication if my reasoning so far is correct. For if the evolution of organic life and human consciousness represents the inexorable unfolding of a potential woven into the fabric of Nature, then what further potential is yet to be expressed? If natural intelligence is as powerful as I suspect, there absolutely must be some final point or solution to its prodigious endeavors.

To give the reader a taste of such a scenario, consider the following thought experiment. Geneticists tell us that a fair proportion of the DNA found in all organisms serves some as yet unknown function. On a worldwide scale, the total amount of this so-called junk DNA must be immense. But what if it were a form of latent information that was set to go into action only when environmental circumstances were in a particular state? What if the biosphere suddenly assumed a context to which this globally distributed DNA was tuned? Anything might happen. All organisms might suddenly mutate and forge themselves anew. The possibilities are endless since DNA is so rich in its capacity to organize chemical and biological processes. Perhaps the reader can think of some alternative possibility.

I offer such wild speculation not because I believe it to be true, but because it highlights, in principle, how reality as we know it might well be coded to produce some climactic output at some latter stage of its evolutionary progression. Equally plausible is the idea that our interconnected computer technology might spawn some new level of informational cohesion—a kind of virtual dimension into which the agency of human consciousness can be transferred. In point of fact, as I previously remarked, through the rise of telecommunications and computing technology, the Earth does seems to be wiring itself up into an integrated digital network, a bioelectronic entity in which widely dispersed informational systems like the human psyche can instantly communicate with one another across the globe. This magical technology, similar as it is to the communicational activity of the synapsing neuronal brain, is clearly evolving at an unprecedented rate, and the eventual emergence of a more “tangible” cyberspatial dimension of some kind seems assured. Indeed, judging by the boom in media speculation about the near future of computing systems along with the escalating popularity of Internet-enabled Wi-Fi phones, it would appear that a fully immersive cyberspace of one sort or another is within reach.

What this kind of rife pop divination reveals is just how forcibly the future now looms upon us. It is as if we were moving ever more rapidly toward some new technological breakthrough involving information integration that will transform our culture, a transformation not only inevitable but whose shadow is already upon us, stirring us into prophetic thinking. For when else in our history has there been so much concentrated speculation about the very near future? More to the point, if some unimaginable fully integrated state were soon to be reached, whether mediated through networked computers or some other orchestrational medium, then clearly Nature has always been poised to deliver such an output. Maybe this could be considered the ultimate purpose of natural intelligence (or at least part of it), for it would represent the translated rebirth of the Other, the blossoming of the biosphere, a final planetary condition that Nature has determined in some way to achieve.

Most of us, however, are content to allow ourselves to be drawn almost passively along within the River of Life. We build sturdy rafts made of material goods and social status. We surround ourselves with items that our culture injects with value, and these are what keep us afloat. And yet our rafts, no matter how robustly they may be constructed and no matter how much wealth they contain, will eventually be destroyed, eaten up by the process in which they are swept along. No matter how long we try to prolong it, the time allotted to our DNA is finite. We are digitally programmed by natural intelligence to grow old and die, just as surely as we are built to grow through puberty and reproduce. We are patterns of information that swirl into ordered existence, only to break up in the wink of a cosmic eye. It’s a good reason to think more carefully about our personal relationship with the river and where it is headed, for then we might discern our proper place within the integrative flow.