Tagged with Botany

If nature is conscious, then Earth is not merely a web of mechanically reflexive predators and prey but something more magical than that: a vibrant, interdependent collective of living, thinking beings. (more)

The archetypal plant organ is the leaf, flat and open to the cosmos. The sun, moon, and stars bring about its rhythmic contractions. Upon this archetypal theme, each plant family plays and improvises in amazing variety. Human beings also have an archetypal form of their body/soul configuration. (more)

Through many years of yoga practice, I had developed an easy talent for accessing unusual realms of consciousness. Yet I was aware that another set of tools existed for such attainment. Could eating hashish enable me to -- as the song by the Doors put it -- break on through to the other side?  (more)

One of the greatest breakthroughs in 20th century medical science came from a preparation used to shoot monkeys down from the tops of trees. Naked "primitives" turned out to be master chemists whose muscle relaxant revolutionized the practice of surgery. Many experts claim the rainforests continues to promise cures. Have we exhausted Nature's cornucopia? Or are we wearing blinders that prevent us from seeing them? (more)