The Beyond, whatever it consists of, might not be nearly as far away or inaccessible as we think . . . But if these dried-up little scraps of fungus taught me anything, it is that there are other, stranger forms of consciousness available to us, and, whatever they mean, their very existence, to quote William James again, ‘forbids a premature closin

The lens required now is not a microscope, but a macroscope: a device for seeing at a far vaster scale – both in space and time – than we are used to.