Conscious Fungus Among Us

Composer Václav Hálek first heard music, complete songs, when staring at a mushroom in 1980.  Since then, he has created almost 6000 mushroom inspired pieces for everything from piano to violin. He says that when he looks at a mushroom, he just hears the music playing in his head and is able to instantly transcribe the melody and the music in real time.

     And I thought I loved mushrooms!  But this claim and deed of Václav Hálek is not one that exists in a vacuum. There is a most mysterious air about when one is deeply interacting with the fungi.  Do you have experiences yourself with seemingly inexplicable or unexplained synchronicity events around fungi? Paul Stamets himself catches flack from the most ardent science-based mycologists for his claims of "divine" connections, and yet, here he is, producing discovery after discovery of the properties of thousands of Fungi, some of the most incredible realizations inspired from his liminal dream state, the place your mind goes just before waking up.

     My own experience with hunting, especially when I am by myself, is one of reverence, impulsiveness, listening to nature and trusting the strange tugs to the left or the right.  In fact, my mushroom hunting friends and I refer to the spirit of the mushrooms, in our experience a playful trickster who is always a few steps ahead of you, as Chief Mushroom Head, so named because of a huge wooden statue of Native American Chief Comcomly outside the town of Astoria, OR.  Though the head piece the man is wearing in this enormous 18ft tall bust is not known to me, it does not take much of a twist of perception to see it as a mushroom. 

Here is a description of the artwork:
          "Toth Indian Giant "Ikala  Nawan" ("Man Who Fishes") was sculptor Peter Toth's 57th "Whispering  Giant." It was carved in 1987 out of cedar log and placed on a concrete  base. The sculpture was carved to honor the Chinook, Clatsop, and all  Northwestern Coastal Indians. It is difficult to get to this statue as  it now resides by an RV dump site. [Stavros K, 09/07/2016] As you enter  Astoria from the south you will see a large Indian Head carved by Peter Toth. This artist has scattered these sculptures all over the USA in tribute to Native Americans. This statue is kind of hard to stop and see  due to the traffic patterns, so keep your eyes open as you drive past. [Phrank Phester, 10/05/2015] The head may be Peter "Wolf" Toth's tribute to Chief Comcomly, who is buried elsewhere in Astoria."

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     The fascination with the mostly unseen world of fungi is more than meets the eye.  We enjoy them for eating, for dying clothing, for understanding more deeply about the Universe though careful use of psychedelic properties, and we enjoy much more of their actions than we know in the management of the Earth itself, the production of our favorite foods like wine, cheese and bread.

     Stepping backward, we know that Kingdom Fungi has been around far longer than either plants or animals--both of which broke off from early fungi on the evolutionary tree--and there is research in just the past few years asserting a fungal consciousness, not intelligence, but literal consciousness.  Frankly, this is exactly how it feels when I let myself be in touch in the woods: that they are aware of your presence and they are reacting to you, even playing with you.  In my more exciting dream-fantasies, actually have control of time and space to some degree to make mushrooms appear under your feet when a minute ago there were none!

     This connection to consciousness as a Universal Quality is explored in the newest Star Trek series Star Trek: Discovery, where Astro-mycologist Lieutenant PAUL STAMETS (seriously) utilizes the underlying Universal Mycelial Web to transport the newest Star Fleet vessel, the USS Discovery anywhere in spacetime in an instant.  The idea of this pervading force is clearly now a mainstream concept.

     So is it surprising to find composer Václav Hálek from Poland who can hear individual songs from each of the mushrooms he encounters?  The hidden world of fungi is not under the ground any more than our consciousness resides in the connections of our neurons. Just as we can use our made-up language to communicate complicated and lofty concepts such as what I am sharing now, should not the neural networks of fungi have personalities and be able to transmit information into the world at large, using the language of their choosing, direct connection with our subtle (quite mycelial brains) consciousness as well?

     I am giving myself permission to dream, to use my liminal state of wakefulness, to reach out across barriers of communication and look for a new interpretation of what it means to be in the world that we share with our fungal ancestors.

     I recommend you do the same.