What Connects Everything Together? Mushrooms

Well… maybe?

There’s definitely something metaphysical and spiritual that connects us together as humans and connects us to the world around us. People throughout history have experimented with ways to strengthen this connection and describe it as reaching peace, enlightenment, harmony, nirvana, etc. This sensation of feeling one with the universe and a deep sense of belonging and connection is so alluring that people will dedicate their entire lives to the pursuit. It’s like chasing the chance to see behind the curtain at God’s design of the heavens and earth. It sounds like a truly spiritual pursuit. But what if it wasn’t just spiritual? What if there were a physical component?

Connecting mind, body, and spirit

I’ve been growing more and more interested in the connection between mental, spiritual, and physical reality. A lot of times these are talked about as separate spheres: consciousness, the soul, and the human body and its sensations. But I think it’s more complicated than that. I’m not sure these are really separate at all. Sure, it helps to separate them from a literary standpoint, because if you don’t clearly define what you’re talking about, then are you really talking about anything? But reality doesn’t fit into the predefined concepts we use for language; we create language concepts as a way to attempt to describe reality. So it makes sense that the truth is a lot more gray than our words can explain. 

In the Catholic tradition, there’s this beautiful concept of physical objects going through a spiritual transformation that actually changes their physical form: transubstantiation. This is also one of the biggest divides between Catholicism and Protestantism. But putting aside the theological debate to just look at the theological concept, there’s an idea that a physical act can impact the spiritual world, which also changes the physical world. There’s no real separation between the two; both worlds exist almost as one greater world. This makes me wonder if we really could find physical phenomena to explain spiritual changes in our world.

There’s a saying from Arthur C. Clarke that “magic is just science we don’t understand yet.” And I think a lot of people use that as a way to discredit magic, religious, and spiritual experiences, but I like to think of it as science proving the magic of our existence. One example of this that inspires me recently is the mysterious world of mushrooms and fungi.

How Fungi connect us

It’s been known that fungi play a role in our ecosystems as decomposers. A dirty, yet vital part of the life cycle. But recently there have been new discoveries that maybe fungi do more than we thought. I’ve cited at the end a paper explaining more in depth about this, but to summarize, it looks like networks of the fungus mycorrhizae allow trees and other plants to communicate with each other. This includes sharing resources, sending information (especially defense information), and allelochemicals that trigger physical responses in the plants. These networks are complex and vital to the health of a forest.

Isn’t it magical?

I feel like if you told someone a century ago that there were microscopic living things in the forest that help all the plants and trees not just live in harmony, but thrive and adapt to the changes of life, that person would call it magic. And yet that’s reality. The exciting thing is there’s still so much to learn too! What else do the connections do in nature? What do they do for us? Are we also connected to these mycorrhizal networks? I wonder that a lot since people feel instantly less stressed and a deeper sense of connection when out in nature. That’s one reason why the practice of “forest bathing” has become popular. Are we actually connecting to something when we are out in nature? And if there isn’t really a separation between the mental, spiritual, and physical worlds, is this connection with the great connecting fungi more than just a physical one? Maybe our world is magic, and we’re just now rediscovering it. 

Whether or not mushrooms and fungi really do connect everything, I think the humble, yet vital role they play in our environment really challenges us to examine our own place in the world. How we fit in, what our role is, what we are, and what we are not. No judgment or pompous self-inflation, just acceptance of who we are and how we fit into the grand mosaic of life. I think it’s a very humbling and personally calming thing to meditate on.