Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

A Note to the Reader

~ First Movement ~
Touching the Foundations of the World

Prelude The Soft Flutter of Butterflies

1 Reclaiming the Invisible
2 “The Doors of Perception”
3 “And the Doorkeeper Obeys When Spoken To”
4 “Everything Is Intelligent”
5 We Want Braaaaains
6 Gaia and “the Pattern That Connects”
7 “Molecular Veriditas”
8 The Function of Psychotropics in the Ecosystem
9 Inextricable Intertangling

~ Second Movement ~
Gaia’s Mind and the Dreaming of Earth

10 “A Certain Adjustment of Consciousness”
11 The Sea of Meaning
12 Following Golden Threads
13 The Naturalist’s Approach The Beginnings of Deep Earth Perception
14 The Imaginal World
15 The Dreaming of Earth
16 Reemergence into Classical Newtonian Space

~ Bridge ~
Bifurcation

17 The Ecological Function of the Human Species
18 “The Road Not Taken”
19 Becoming Barbarian

~ Coda ~
A Different Kind of Thinking

Epilogue To See the Shimmer of Infinity in the Face of the Other

Diminuendo
Al Niente The Movement of Great Things
Appendix 1 Sensory Overload and Self-Caretaking
Appendix 2 On the Healing of Schizophrenia

Notes

Bibliography

Index

About the Author

Stephen Harrod Buhner (1952–2022) was the senior researcher for the Foundation for Gaian Studies. Described as both an Earth Poet and a Bardic Naturalist, he was the award-winning author of many books, including The Lost Language of Plants, The Secret Teachings of Plants, and Sacred Plant Medicine. He taught for more than thirty years throughout North America and Europe.

Reviews

“This is a rare and splendid book that takes you right into the heart and soul of the world. Read it and be transformed.”
*Stephan Harding, Ph.D., head of Holistic Science, Schumacher College, UK, and author of Animate Eart*

“The twentieth century was the great age of physics, and the twenty-first is the age of biology. According to Stephen Harrod Buhner, we must interact empathically with the biosphere by opening our perceptual gates to perceive through all body sensations. He deliciously explores music, writing, art, and plants as tools for reclaiming our feeling sense of nature. Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm is a work of heartfelt wisdom written so exquisitely that it took my breath away, a must read for anyone who wants to achieve keystone intelligence--empathic immersion within Earth’s dreaming.”
*Barbara Hand Clow, author of Awakening the Planetary Mind: Beyond the Trauma of the Past to a New Er*

“Stephen Harrod Buhner’s The Lost Language of Plants and The Secret Teaching of Plants taught a generation of herbalists to trust our sense that the world was alive and speaking to us. Plant Intelligence and the Imaginal Realm takes us further down that path of remembering and re-enchantment, awakening our capacity to tap directly in to the Gaian mind. Be warned: if you read this book, you will never be the same again.”
*Sean Donahue, traditional herbalist and instructor, School of Western Herbal Medicine at Pacific Rim*

“There is much magic, and a wealth of wisdom in this book. It is a wisdom that anyone can come, not only to understand, but to live within. To take this journey is to embrace a great healing, and to release a great burden. The healing answers your deepest longing, I won't say what the burden is, but you will know it when you let it go.”
*The Fall Buyers MetaGuide, September 2014*