This book is a user’s
manual about the techniques and states of perception necessary for directly interacting
with the Gaian system, perceiving the deeper patterns in Gaian movements, and
understanding the meanings within those patterns. In many respects it is a
manual for becoming a nondomesticated explorer of the natural world, something that
used to be called, long ago, a natural philosopher, what might now be called a wild scientist as opposed to a
domesticated one.
Unlike the majority of books being written about the state of Earth/human
relationship and the problems that face us, this book does not list all the
troubles and then, at the end, call for more regulation, urge you to write your
congressional representative, insist you recycle or buy an (absurdly expensive)
environmentally friendly car, or plead for you to give money to nonprofits. As
Einstein so eloquently put it—We cant solve
problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them. So, this book is about
how to actually think differently, the processes involved, and how they will
alter your perceptual frame if you use them. It then urges you to do one thing:
whatever it is that you think you should do in
response. It is in your own individual genius that the answers lie, not in the
pronouncements of experts who have no conception of the local environment in which
you live every day of your life. Letting the experts run things is how we got
into this mess to begin with.
Thus this book is specifically meant for those who understand what it
means to look with glittering (i.e.,
luminous) eyes. For that is the understanding that binds us together, that lies
at the heart of thinking differently. If you are a mechanicalist or die-hard
reductionist (or even someone who thinks humans are somehow innately different,
i.e., more special,
than all other life-forms on this planet) this book will only irritate you,
upset your stomach, and cause you to mutter over and over again, “Wrong!
Wrong!” Please read Richard Dawkins instead.
Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm is the fourth in a
series of five (or perhaps six, or seven, or eight) books that began, long ago,
with Sacred Plant Medicine (Inner Traditions, 1996), and which also includes The Lost Language of Plants (Chelsea Green, 2002) and The Secret Teachings of Plants (Inner Traditions, 2004). (Note: Lost Language contains a depth look at chemical
communication among plants and their ecosystems; Secret Teachings a depth look at heart perception,
synchronization of heart fields, and EM field dynamics.) As with those latter
two works, some of the material in this book, especially in the first half, is somewhat
technical. That density exists as part of a long-term project to create a map
of human interaction with the natural world that actually has something to do
with the real world, an area in which our current maps, inherited from the late
nineteenth century, are tremendous deficient. You don’t have to read those parts—you
can just skip around if you wish. In fact, I urge you to have fun and from now
on take in what has relevance to you and to ignore the rest. After all, it’s your life, you should spend it
how you want. Stephen Buhner The Gila Wilderness, 2013
