The atheist materialist mind vs the mystical psychedelic mind

[Majed]

Here what i've come to in my contemplation of these two minds:  

Features of the atheist materialist mind: turning outwards, believing in a external objective reality, scientific worldview, authority to science, believes the universe is physical, no God, only believes in what science has demonstrated to be the case, believes himself to be a human, believes in rigid categories of evil vs good, man vs woman, man vs machine, human vs animal, mind vs matter..., sees progress in terms of technological innovation, believes that religion, spirituality and mysticism to be non sense and unscientific fairy tales, sees animals as inferior to human beings and deserving of exploitation for the betterment of mankind, sees the universe as static, physical and independent of the mind, the world seems cold and foreign, this mind is very much alienated from the world, represses emotions, sees nature as a tool for exploitation, promote mastery over the world through science and technology.

Features of the mystical psychedelic mind: turning inwards, grounded in direct experience and consciousness, conscious that the physical universe is God's imagination, takes epistemology and metaphysics seriously, questioning and deconstructing of one's mind, conscious of the self as God, non dual, sees science as a dream, sees animals as unique expressions of God's divine beauty and consciousness with a rich inner world and experience, sees reality as a fluid field of consciousness where the boundary between physical and mental or imaginary is broken down, and whatever one is conscious of is what's true, and where one merge in absolute bliss and ecstasy, experience emotions with mindfulness and mastery, embedded in nature, sees nature as a vehicle for higher emotions, consciousness and truths, nature mysticism, sees imagination as reality, promote inner wisdom and transformation, takes not knowing seriously.

Edited Sunday at 08:43 PM by Majed

[DocWatts]

(Friendly suggestion, but this thread may be more at home in the Intellectual Stuff or Spirituality sections). 

As an outsider to both of these perspectives, I might have a somewhat novel take here. From my vantage point, Materialism and God-Consciousness Mysticism are more similar than you might think. While on the surface these two perspectives may seem like inverses of one another, the shared thread is that both are metaphysical ontologies - linked by their shared intuition that Reality has an absolute ground - or a fundamental basis for what’s ‘really real’. Of course, each one argues that their favored substrate - matter and energy, god-consciousness  - is the 'correct' ground.

(Note: ontology is a subset of philosophy that concerns itself with how we categorize things, what those things ultimately are, and more generally what counts as ‘real’).

Moreover, both Materialism and God-Consciousness Mysticism are Transcendental Perspectives - meaning that there's a shared assumption that entities and phenomena need to have an existence which transcends our everyday, human perspective within Reality to be ‘truly real’. For materialism, entities and phenomena are 'real' because matter and physical laws persist whether or not anyone is there to observe them. For God-Consciousness Mysticism, entities and phenomena are 'real' because our god-consciousness expands beyond our everyday experience and creates all of Reality.

I'd contend that both of these are 'outside-in' ontologies because they begin with a metaphysical intuition about what's ultimately 'real', and work their way backwards to the sublime mundanity of everyday experience. In contrast, another way of doing ontology is an 'inside-out' or 'phenomenological' approach, which brackets the question of what's 'ultimately real',   and instead uses our everyday, embodied interactions with the world as a starting point for understanding our unavoidably anthropocentric viewpoint within Reality. In short, you could think of this 'third' approach as a pragmatic perspective that's less interested in what Reality ultimately is, more interested in understanding how human beings actually navigate the messy complexity of our embodied situation within Reality.

Edited Monday at 04:26 PM by DocWatts

[Majed]

Atheist tries out psychedelics: 

Watch only the psychedelic part. 

The problem is that even with psychedelic experience, his mind has still not deconstructed materialism, atheism, the brain...