rationalskepticism.org

nunnington wrote:
I can connect your ideas to the so-called 'non-dual', which is found in a number of Eastern religions. It involves the dropping of the ego, or the separate I. This can be done via various meditation techniques, some drugs, such as ayahuasca, and I've met some people who just sort of slide into it.

I'm not sure about the ground of all being, but I can see how that experience could occur, since the non-dual experience quite often seems to invoke feelings of oneness and creativity. And again, I can see how this might lead some people to theism, but then in disciplines like Zen, it doesn't. But in something like advaita, the individual and God are the same, so this is quite different from the Abrahamics, (where God is the Other); maybe this is rather similar to Berkeleyan idealism, although I stand to be corrected on this.

The eastern idea behind non-duality is the subject of heated debate in Philosophy of Mind, because it relates to the Mind-body problem or the subject–object problem. Perhaps you're familiar, but for those who are not. Non-duality is the dissolving of the subject-object duality. The subject of experience, and the objects which are being experienced, i.e. your life, the world, the universe, basically. The boundary between these two are dissolved in such a way that both become seemlessly interconnected, hence non-dual. So, you have this metaphor, "I am one with everything," but this metaphor is sometimes misleading, because it posits that there is an "I" to become "one," a duality.

Ramesh Balsekar, a recently deceased guru of India put it this way, "What is the significance of the statement 'No one can get enlightenment'? This is the very root of the teaching. It means that it's stupid for any so-called master to ask anyone to do anything to achieve or get enlightenment. The core of this simple statement means, according to my concept, that enlightenment is the annihilation of the 'one' who 'wants' enlightenment. If there is enlightenment - which can only happen because it is the will of God (or Cosmic Law if you're not comfortable with the word God) - then it means the 'one' who had earlier wanted enlightenment has been annihilated. So no 'one' can achieve enlightenment and therefore no 'one' can enjoy enlightenment. The joke is even the surrendering is not in your control. Why? Because so long as there is an individual who says 'I surrender' there is a surrenderer, an individual ego… What I'm saying is that even the surrendering is not in [your] hands."

I felt this "oneness" not as being one with the current of every moment of the universe, but it felt rather almost acosmist. A sense of a kind of absolute. This is what gained my interest in String Theory, because string theory seemed to be saying exactly same thing, although physicists didn't arrive at this conclusion by powerful intuition through a phenomenon in consciousness, but rigorous intellectual mathematics. The notion of "11-dimensional hyperspace" in M-theory is defined as an absolute. You cannot go any higher dimensions, according to M-theory, because once you've reached the 11th dimension, that's it. That is the domain where every possibility is contained. The reason it might be called static or timeless is because it is an expression of all possibilities at once that are unmanifest in pure potential. If it's true that matter, the manifest universe, is nothing but an array of "strings" that resonate in these higher dimensions, then that's why you have these metaphors, like the one I used earlier, of a 2D horizontal slice through a three-dimensional cone. This would leave you with a 2D circle. Well, a three-dimensional slice through hyperspace would leave with the perception of this universe. Michio Kaku would often say that these strings are analogous to strings on an instrument. You, of course, don't play all the strings at once, but you select notes, and by selecting notes, in this sense, the universe is like an orchestra of vibrating strings which casts out this manifested universe.

So, the idea here is that while we have our known universe, these strings, because they resonate in hyperspace, are not only casting out our universe, but every single other possible universe. After all, the Big Bang was not simply an unimaginable explosion that burst our universe into existence, but a Bang that occurred in hyperspace that flung all universes into existence. I don't know how accurate any of that is, it's simply what I've picked up from reading Brian Greene or Kaku's material, but the point is that this domain in which the mystics intuit seems to be more profound than simply being "one with the universe," it seems more that this "unmanifest absolute" is rather what they are getting in touch with, and this is what I felt myself, and this is what most people who have this experience describe. Otherwise, I don't think you'd have a whole group of Strassman's volunteers coming back muttering phrases such as "4th dimensional" or "beyond dimensionality." Now, like I said before, I'm not positing that you do, in fact, come in contact with a higher dimension, but this is the overwhelming impression within the experience itself. So, to summarize, I don't believe it is Berkeleyan idealism unless you want to invoke the concept of Indra's net. Berkeley's idealism seems more like an extension of solipsism. This impression of the absolute is what eastern mystics might refer to as the "divine," or a "panentheism" as distinct from "pantheism." I want to leave you with two links that sort of go over similar concepts.

tolman wrote:
I was pointing out that 'experiences' I had could not be meaningfully described as hallucinations, and that I personally saw things in them beyond entertainment, such as a greater insight (or at least a feeling that I had greater insight) into how I think.

I just don't feel or pretend that experiences I've had are reflective of anything hiding 'out there'.

I apologize. As I said, I was going to work, so I was in a rush and skimmed through your post and I admit, I did misinterpret it. The question of whether the brain is the generator of consciousness or that is fundamentally non-physical is still up for debate in neuroscience, and is heavily the topic of Philosophy of Mind. I do realize it's the assumption of most people, the mainstream view is that consciousness is definitely produced by the brain, the same way a factory makes cars. So, if you destroy the factory, then the factory stops producing cars. Ergo, if you destroy the brain, then consciousness blinks out. The other view that the brain is a transceiver of consciousness in the very same way a TV is the transceiver of a signal. So, if you destroy the TV set, the signal it transceived is still there. It's concepts like this that keep the debate running, and that have physicists like David Bohm reject materialism as an explanation of consciousness, and adopt new concepts such as Qauntum Mind.

I still want to make a distinction about this experience, because you compared your experience to a fully awake dream. My experience, I felt, was much more profound than a lucid dream, not matter how lucid or fully awake. It felt as though I was somehow witness to what I've come to call "The Fountain of Dreams," and I use this in a very similar sense that people use this phrase "Ground of all Being." In other words, in a dream, you usually have the impression (usually) that you're a bodily entity roaming through an environment, no matter how much lucidity or lack thereof of you possess. Well, my experience seemed more that I was somehow glimpsing the source of all dreams, of all possible dreams. So, I wasn't playing out a specific scenario, but by "Fountain of Dreams," I was somehow experiencing the source of every possible dream that could be, simultaneously. This is what made this experience feel much profound than that of a lucid dream.

tolman wrote:I'm intrigued as to when either Terence McKenna or you became experts on my internal experiences, how consistently 'fun' they may have been, and what I may or may not have done in order to have them.

And that will be Terence 'the universe will end in 2012' Mckenna, I suppose.

Terence was often taken too seriously the whole "2012 thing." If your cornered him, he'd admit that he didn't take the idea too seriously. People seem to hold him to that, and discredit his concepts based on this one idea. The real thing he did, I believe, is in studying shamanism, and living in South America and seeing how these people used psychedelics. He saw that these indigenous people, if they were going to have "have fun," they'd intentionally take light doses of these psychedelics. However, the shaman was the appointed individual that would use what Terence called the "heroic dose" or "effective dose." In other words, the dose range that will give you the full-spectrum of effects. And this for them was done for spiritual purposes, and of course, if you don't like that word, then psychological insight. Terence would engage in these experience often, but not in the sense of every day. Just often enough so that he could stop and examine an experience before moving on to the next one. He admitted to smoking N,N-DMT over 70 times in his lifetime. He also was an avid reader, and was well aware of Freud, Jung, classical philosophy, depth psychology, etc. He didn't just interpret his experience purely through shamanism, he simply took the technique. Have you ever heard one of his talks? This guy was extremely articulate and could drift you away into imagery, and paint a picture for you like no other.

So, while I'm not sure what would constitute an "expert" for you, but that's definitely more expert, I'd say, than someone who studies this stuff purely from the outside, meaning without undergoing the bioassay. I don't have as much extensive experience as Terence, but I do have a considerable experience myself, and I've also been obsessed with this topic since my first "heroic dose." I wouldn't call myself an expert, but this is a research endeavor that's ongoing in my life. But basically, this phenomenon will not occur until you've taken a "heroic dose," and that doesn't mean there's a concretely defined dose. It's a different amount for different people. No two people share the same bodyweight, metabolism, sensitivity to these substances, etc. All these factors, of course, play a role, but as a general rule with something like psilocybin-containing mushrooms, he'd say if you weigh about 140 lbs, you want to take at least five dried grams. If you weigh more, take a little more, but you want to take more than less, because you don't want to miss the point.

I'd also like to point out that this isn't necessarily about psychedelics. I believe psychedelics can induce this "mystical experience," but it's not the only path to it, like I've mentioned in earlier posts. I believe the phrase "Ground of All Being" is a metaphor drawn out of this experience, it's a subjective take of the individual's impression. It's definitely not something, I believe, the individual on his/her own could draw out of fanciful imagination in the ordinary state of consciousness. Psychedelics just seem to be a reliable route to them (mystical epxerience) so that you don't have to fast for weeks, you don't have to engage in asceticism, disciplines such as meditation, or a near-death experience. It is a tried-and-true phenomenon that does, in fact, exist. I don't believe it to be "vague religious philosophical bullshit," people simply assume that because this experience has, thus far, primarily been spoken about in a context of religion. But there are more modern takes that have been written about by such authors as Richard M. Bucke or William James who've spoken about this experience in a more contemporary context, and do not use religious references in their labelling, and so Bucke called labelled this phenomenon "Cosmic Consciousness." Neurotheology is an effort to pin this phenomenon down with the explanatory power of neuroscience. Anyway, I wanted to write so much more, but in fear that this wall of text might be so daunting as to not get people to read, I'll end it here with a link of an atheist speaking on the matter.