T h e m u s h r o o m s p e a k s, and our opinions rest upon what it tells eloquently of itself in the cool night
of the mind: "I am old, older than thought in your species, which is itself fifty times older than
your history. Though I have been on earth for ages I am from the stars. My home is no one planet,
for many worlds scattered
through the shining disc of the galaxy
have conditions which allow my
spores
an opportunity for life. The mushroom which you see is the part of my body given to sex thrills and
sun bathing, my true
body is a fine network of fibers growing through the soil. These networks may
cover
acres and may have far more connections than the number in a human brain. My mycelial network
is nearly im
mortal - only the sudden toxification of a planet or the explosion of its parent star can
wipe me out. By means impossible to explain because of certain misconceptions in your model of reality
all my
mycelial networks in the galaxy are in hyperlight communication across space and time. The
mycelial body is as fragile as a spider's web but

the collective hypermind and memory is a vast
historical archive of the career of evolving intelligence on many
worlds in our spiral star swarm.
Space, you see, is a vast ocean to those hardy life forms that have the ability to reproduce from
spores, for spores are covered with the hardest organic substance known. Across the aeons of time and
space drift many spore-forming, life-forms in suspended animation for millions of years until contact
is made with a suitable environment. Few such species are minded, only myself and my recently evolved
near relatives have archived the hyper-communication mode and memory capacity that makes
us leading
members
in the comm
unity of galactic intelligence. How the hyper-communication mode operates is a
secret which will not be given lightly to humans. But the means should be obvious: it is the
occurrence of psilocybin and psilocin in the biosynthetic pathways of my living body that opens for me
and my symbiots the vision screens to many worlds. You as an
individual and Homo sapiens as a species
are on the
brink of the formation of a symbiotic
relationship with my genetic material that will
eventually carry humanity and earth into the galactic mainstream of the higher civilizations.
Since it is not easy for you to
recognize other varieties of intelligence
around you, your most advanced
theories of politics and society have advanced only as far as the notion of collectivism. But beyond
the cohesion of the members of a species into a single social organ
ism there lie richer and even
more baroque
evolutionary possibilities. Symbiosis is one of these. Symbiosis is a relation of mutual
dependence and positive benefits for both of the species involved. Symbiotic relationships between
myself and civilized forms of higher animals
have been established many times and in many places
throughout the long ages
of my development. The relationships have been mutually useful; within my
memory is the knowledge of hyper-light drive ships
and how to build them. I will trade this knowledge
for a free ticket to new worlds around suns younger and more stable than your own. To secure an eternal
existence down
the long river of cosmic time, I again and again offer this agreement
to higher beings
and thereby have spread throughout the galaxy over the long millennia. A mycelial network has no
organs to move the world,
no hands; but higher animals with manipulative abilities can become partners
with the star knowledge within me and if they act in good faith, return both themselves
and their
humble mushroom teachers to the million worlds to which all citizens of our starswarm are heir."
-
terence mckenna, foreword(Psilocybin)