The Challenge, Simply Stated
The challenge facing the "mystical atheist" is clear enough and simply stated: Show the reality of these "mystical" aspects.
Applying Clarke's Third Law, one simply must identify and verify the natural processes, thus rendering them mundane, and not mystical or supernatural.
Take astral projection, for instance. That one's already explained; you aren't "projecting" or "traveling" anywhere other than inside your own mind and brain. Traditional flying ointment? It is clove oil and hashish oil in a generic base such as jojoba oil, applied to the temples. That some can achieve similar effects through meditation isn't especially confounding. Nor that we have a massive anecdotal history of similar experiences amid traumatic experience. Astral projection, while it may actually offer some psychiatric benefit, is nothing more than a chemical state in the brain.
The animal self? Grill on a couple grams of good S. cubensis and take a moment to examine yourself in the mirror on a trip to the toilet. My animal self is some sort of jaguar or other large cat, as near as I can tell from the perceptual distortions about my reflection. Then again, I recall an acid trip in which my girlfriend's "spirit animal" turned out to be a Swiss Miss looking Weeble, and one of our friends revealed himself as orange and green plastic pork chops. In the end, I'm not a cat, she's not a Weeble, and he isn't a child's toy kitchen set, no matter what I might have seen.
The science will point to brain chemistry long before it discovers anything we might otherwise describe as a spirit world, astral plane, besom flight, or other such magick.
The challenge facing the "mystical atheist" is clear enough and simply stated: Show the reality of these "mystical" aspects.
Applying Clarke's Third Law, one simply must identify and verify the natural processes, thus rendering them mundane, and not mystical or supernatural.
Take astral projection, for instance. That one's already explained; you aren't "projecting" or "traveling" anywhere other than inside your own mind and brain. Traditional flying ointment? It is clove oil and hashish oil in a generic base such as jojoba oil, applied to the temples. That some can achieve similar effects through meditation isn't especially confounding. Nor that we have a massive anecdotal history of similar experiences amid traumatic experience. Astral projection, while it may actually offer some psychiatric benefit, is nothing more than a chemical state in the brain.
The animal self? Grill on a couple grams of good S. cubensis and take a moment to examine yourself in the mirror on a trip to the toilet. My animal self is some sort of jaguar or other large cat, as near as I can tell from the perceptual distortions about my reflection. Then again, I recall an acid trip in which my girlfriend's "spirit animal" turned out to be a Swiss Miss looking Weeble, and one of our friends revealed himself as orange and green plastic pork chops. In the end, I'm not a cat, she's not a Weeble, and he isn't a child's toy kitchen set, no matter what I might have seen.
The science will point to brain chemistry long before it discovers anything we might otherwise describe as a spirit world, astral plane, besom flight, or other such magick.
