MYCELIAL GNOSTIC NETWORKS AND THE AEON OF THE MUSHROOM DHARMA

Part of our series of talks called ✨ “The Tantric Engine of Hyperstitional Dharma: Navigating the Rhizome of Emptiness in the Age of Algorithmic Gods” ✨

You can listen to the space here.

Mycelial Gnostic Networks and the Aeon of Mushroom Dharma

By Lama Fede Andino & Lama Sherab

When we speak about “Mushroom Dharma,” we are not simply talking about psychedelics or the fascination with fungi. The mushroom here is a metaphor for how Dharma itself functions—hidden, interconnected, and transformative.

Just as the mushroom visible above the soil is only the fruiting body of a vast underground mycelial network, Dharma teachings, scriptures, and teachers are the surface manifestations of a deeper transmission of gnosis (jñāna). The real work, the real transformation, spreads silently like spores beneath the surface.

Sutras, High Weirdness, and the Buddha Mushroom

People often assume the tantras are the most “strange” part of Buddhism, but in fact, the sutras are often stranger. In one text, a Buddha appears as a mushroom whose spores “infect” beings and transform them into Dharma zombies.

Far from a horror image, this is liberation. To be “infected” by awakening is to be freed from self-clinging, to embody wisdom and compassion without choice. It is the contagious nature of realization itself.

Entheogens: Doors That Open and Close

Lama Fede reflected on his beginnings in South America, where entheogens (mushrooms, ayahuasca, peyote, San Pedro) are part of shamanic culture. Used carefully, they can break the rigid perception that “this world is the only reality,” opening one to the insight that perception is multiple, flexible, and shifting.

But there is danger. Many mistake the entheogenic vision as “the true reality.” This is the Matrix syndrome: believing one has woken up from illusion into “the real world,” when in fact one has only entered another mode of illusion.

The Dharma warns us: samsara and nirvana are both empty. Awakening is not about exchanging one false reality for another, but about seeing through the illusion-making itself.

Reification in Dharma: The Tulku System

This same danger of reification exists within Buddhism itself. The tulku system, for example, began as a way of honoring qualities: calling Nāgārjuna an emanation of Mañjuśrī (wisdom sharp as a sword), or likening a powerful teacher to Vajrapāṇi (embodiment of enlightened energy).

Over time, these poetic recognitions hardened into hereditary titles, bound to families and institutions. The living symbol became reified into a rigid identity. And when one encounters tulkus who do not embody the qualities they are supposed to represent, the system loses its force.

The problem is not tulkus themselves—it is the reification, the mistaking of symbol for substance.

The Manosphere, Hyperstition, and Narrative Control

This problem is not limited to Dharma. The so-called “manosphere” online has discovered a similar principle: that reality is not fixed, but can be rewritten as narrative. At its best, it offers strategies for self-improvement: “stop these habits, start these others.”

But at its worst, it becomes its own hyperstitious cult, creating closed loops of self-importance and grievance. The manosphere demonstrates how narrative control can liberate—or imprison.

Likewise, Dharma can either free us into vastness, or trap us in titles, roles, and systems that serve ego instead of awakening.

Mycelial Dharma: Networks, Not Monoliths

The true model for Dharma transmission is not vertical authority but horizontal network.

Dharma is like mycelium: hidden, subtle, and pervasive. Its measure is not lineage title, institution, or family, but its fruits:

• Does it transform perception?

• Does it generate compassion?

• Does it liberate beings from narrow modes of reality?

These are the signs that Dharma is alive, just as mushrooms are the surface fruit of a living underground web.

Closing Reflections

Both psychedelia and institutional Dharma risk falling into the same trap: main character syndrome. The belief that “I am special, I am chosen, I am the center of this story.”

If practice is for self-aggrandizement, it will fail.If practice is for others—for Sangha, for community, for all beings—then awakening can spread like spores, unseen yet unstoppable.

Mushroom Dharma teaches us that gnosis is not a possession but a transmission, not an object but a network. The more we let it flow through us and into others, the more we enter the Aeon of the Mushroom.

🌱 Key takeaway: Liberation is never about being the “main character.” It is about dissolving into the great network of wisdom and compassion, where awakening spreads like spores across the forest of mind.

#mushroom #dharma #networks