I'm struck by the fact there was nothing supernatural about my heightened perceptions that afternoon, nothing that I needed an idea of magic or a divinity to explain. No, all it took was another perceptual slant on the same old reality, a lens or mode of consciousness that invented nothing but merely {merely!} italicized the prose of ordinary experience, disclosing the wonder that is always there in a garden or wood, hidden in plain sight-another form of consciousness "parted from {us}," as William James put it, "by the filmiest of screens." Nature does in fact teem with subjectivities-call them spirits if you like-other than our own; it is only the human ego, with its imagined monopoly on subjectivity, that keeps us from recognizing them all, our kith and kin. In this sense, I guess Paul Stamets is right to think the mushrooms are bringing us messages from nature, or at least helping us to open up and read them.
( Michael Pollan )
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