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6/28/2025, 3:09:44 AM
>>40616049
I was an atheist for a long time. I collected good arguments for my atheism like they were Pokémon cards. Studied analytic physicalism and materialism pretty thoroughly - got a really good sense of where the neuroscience was and, I mean, science has had a ton of explanatory power for the last few centuries… we’ve had huge strides in virtually every area of science. The more we invest in our exploration of this mechanism behind reality, the more it seems to bare fruit.
Yet, something still itched inside my brain. We still have no really good grasp of how consciousness works (at least from a western/analytic/scientific perspective)… that’s not say we don’t have a (decent) grasp of the relationship between areas of the brain and its affect on our consciousness - science really can’t tell us anything about the “what’s it like” aspect of consciousness.
I’ve experienced ego death through psychedelics. I’ve experienced it through physical trauma. I’ve experienced it in deep states of meditation. I know, without a doubt, that there is a “oneness” in all things.
When one abstracts the contingent aspects of the “self” (the body, the experience, the personality, the “clothes of the self”), there yet remains a state of pure awareness that one cannot help but be totally married to.
It is beyond duality. It is everything and its opposite. It is at the root of every major mystic tradition. It is the great “I am”.
This “I am” is almost unrecognizable in the religious traditions in the west. It has been usurped by dogma. The clothes man has (arbitrarily) dressed God with. We have become enamored with its tapestry, and not what it represents.
Faith in this journey will guide you to knowledge. You must be willing to relinquish your dogma - be it religious or atheist.
I was an atheist for a long time. I collected good arguments for my atheism like they were Pokémon cards. Studied analytic physicalism and materialism pretty thoroughly - got a really good sense of where the neuroscience was and, I mean, science has had a ton of explanatory power for the last few centuries… we’ve had huge strides in virtually every area of science. The more we invest in our exploration of this mechanism behind reality, the more it seems to bare fruit.
Yet, something still itched inside my brain. We still have no really good grasp of how consciousness works (at least from a western/analytic/scientific perspective)… that’s not say we don’t have a (decent) grasp of the relationship between areas of the brain and its affect on our consciousness - science really can’t tell us anything about the “what’s it like” aspect of consciousness.
I’ve experienced ego death through psychedelics. I’ve experienced it through physical trauma. I’ve experienced it in deep states of meditation. I know, without a doubt, that there is a “oneness” in all things.
When one abstracts the contingent aspects of the “self” (the body, the experience, the personality, the “clothes of the self”), there yet remains a state of pure awareness that one cannot help but be totally married to.
It is beyond duality. It is everything and its opposite. It is at the root of every major mystic tradition. It is the great “I am”.
This “I am” is almost unrecognizable in the religious traditions in the west. It has been usurped by dogma. The clothes man has (arbitrarily) dressed God with. We have become enamored with its tapestry, and not what it represents.
Faith in this journey will guide you to knowledge. You must be willing to relinquish your dogma - be it religious or atheist.
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