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SpeedOfSound wrote:
I have had this experience wile completely without drugs and actually engaged in an Alan Watts piece at the time it occurred.

Well, Dr. Rick Strassman speculates in his book "DMT: The Spirit Molecule" that even in the natural case, this may very well be an induction of endogenous N,N-DMT. So, if he's right, then one can never truly say they've had this experienced "without drugs."

SpeedOfSound wrote:There is no one. There is no mind apart from the universe. Mind is of the universe, as a locality, when there is a brain somewhere in the system. Mind is a relationship.

Well, this is the concept behind Bohm's Quantum Mind as well, only that consciousness is projected into this "sectioning of hyperspace," if you will. It is intertwined with the physical brain, but it is ultimately not 'anywhere' in the sense that it could be 'measured.'

SpeedOfSound wrote:
There is no need to go this far. There is something more to it than the neurons and the brain and that something is what the universe is doing in the locality about you. It's actually materialism, but not the materialism that we mutter about which is just a failure of imagination.

The entire reason for concepts such as Quantum Mind is because physicists feel that materialism is inadequate for describing consciousness. Materialism doesn't really have an answer for the Hard problem of consciousness. If everything was utterly humdrum, and classical mechanics described the functioning of consciousness, then one might ask why aren't there philosophical zombies?

SpeedOfSound wrote:But there are trees and these are far above those breaking and forming of chemical bonds in your mind. There is no imagining a tree without prior trees in the world. Now if you imagine a tree, then stand in front of a real tree, then take some acid and stand in front of a real tree you will find that the first is far less lurid than the last. This is because your mind IS the tree and of course you as well. A relationship in some local space.

I used a tree as an example, but I didn't have to. You don't necessarily need to be aware of a concept first to arrive at a result. I could have used something more abstract. The physical brain may be localized, but as for the imagined concept, this is what Quantum Consciousness might say is nonlocal, but nevertheless possesses a direct correlate to the physical brain.

SpeedOfSound wrote:Various drugs and temporal lobe seizures allow a 'glimpse' into what the material universe is actually like. Imaginings about quantum connections and cosmic consciousness and the mind as some sort of super-phenomena are actually nowhere near to the spiritual nature of the material universe itself. They are pale caricatures of the actual reality of materialism.

Okay, I get it. You're a materialist. Does this mean you do not accept concepts like superstring theory or M-theory that posit higher spatial dimensions? Or a concept like Bell's nonlocality which involves quantum entanglement?

SpeedOfSound wrote:Going back to the Balsekar quote above you can see the subtle twist I am applying here. Expanding the mind to take in the universe is just another one up level of ego and fails enlightenment.

I don't think that's necessarily what's happening. After all, this experience is more contemporarily known as "ego death." It is rather not that you're trying to "expand you're mind" to level up your ego, but that you're witness to or you glimpse a full-spectrum of consciousness such that words could scarcely say what that is like, experientially. It is a phenomenon in consciousness that atheists and theists alike are usually unfamiliar with, and in fact, aren't even aware exist. If Perennial Philosophy is correct, then these type of experiences are at the very basis of major religion. If you scratch every major religion, you're going to find individuals engaging altered states of consciousness. Even Alan Watts spoke on this point of view, and I'll post a link to that below.