Inspired by the demon thread

Now I do not really mean atheism in the sense of absolute denial (no-god) but that flavour of 'atheism' which deals with pure left brained thinking, rejecting the notions of fairies, spirits, imaginations. We then have the right brained modalities of pure experience and dreaming and spirits. Leaving aside the disproof of 'left and right brained' as an actual brain difference, we might consider or explore the implications of the two profoundly differing ways of thought.



In my experience, both ways are correct and lead to equivalent understandings in the end. The process of course is diametrically opposed, hence the curiousity. It creates a world in which both the hard atheist and the spooky spiritualist are both entirely correct yet perfectly able to disagree with each other.


I remember reading elsewhere that plant entheogens can be used to facilitate profound emotional healing but then there is also a way to do it without them and equally effectively.

It seems that it should be possible to arrive at an understanding with the mind, that soothes the heart. However does this tackle the more sensitive feeling 'self' underneath? I get the impression it does not. It is cold and unfeeling but able to decide what is the truth. Given that truth, the emotional inner child self can accept it and release, expanding further into the True Self or emotionally reject it and withdraw deeper within and the ego becomes stronger. A whole host of associated feelings are typically present when this happens in either of the cases.


On the flipside we have the other modality. In this one there are etheric entities, spirits, ghastly vampires, astral entities, all manner of creatures which seem to be beyond one's own control. They fly in, they fuck you senseless (oftentimes scarily literally) and they leave having sapped all your emotional energy. The more one tries to explore this realm, the deeper it gets. A sense of a vast reality beyond ordinary reality, filled with beings of varying vibrations. Dark entities, light entities, liberated entities. Highly knowing entities, parasitic entities, other entities which seem to be level with humans and are just living life as it comes.


In the first modality we have absolute control. The mind does not allow for any irrational factors, it does not allow for anything which it cannot hold firmly, put it in its place and dissect it into bits. However there is no feeling. None whatsoever. If mind feels what it is talking about, it might have to surrender control to that which is felt. Which can be very scary! We have been frightened often enough perhaps as children that the guard is essentially semi-permanently up.


In the second modality, the totality of feeling is available. Imagery enters the scene and directly corresponds to the observer's emotional contents. Low vibrational feelings such as hate, envy, despair attract low vibrational beings. High vibrational feelings such as love, oneness, empathy, attract high vibrational beings. This sets the reference for the lesson of the dream, whatever it is. And the experience is experienced and what follows thereafter, is more experience. Experience of experience. Which is lacking in the sense that raw experience on its own does not satisfy the mind.


How does one bring the two together and find a way to exert absolute control and dominion over the spiritual entities? How does one bring the two together and find a way to feel in its entirety each and every object held within the mind?

Given that everyone experiences hallucinations such as dreams and forgetting (to name some obvious examples), I think it's incredibly naive to assume that our perceptions are reliable. With that in mind, I have to point out to the physicalists that everything we have learned about physical reality, including the brain, results from these unreliable perceptions.

So to address your final question, I think that, for a physicalist, the spiritual aspects of life are dismissed as hallucinations, when the reality is that it may all be one big hallucination. Someone can live with a foot in both realms once they've accepted that physicalism results from circular assumptions, but I'm still not exactly sure what this entails. For me, the boundary between the two views only dissolves when I am on psychedelics. Otherwise, I can go back and forth between believing one or the other. The cognitive dissonance is strong with this one, but if there's one thing I've learned from psychedelics, its how to live with mutually exclusive beliefs. It is just part of keeping your options open. As Terence McKenna once said, when you commit to believing something you are precluded from believing its opposite, and in doing so you give up your basic freedom as a human being to think whatever you want.