A most amazing experience of real-life transcendence described by a scientist

http://www.microclesia.com/?p=320

This is a most eloquent, heart-felt expose I have ever witnessed from a scientist. The only other one was Baba Ram Dass (Dr Richard Alpert) describing how he felt on LSD when he spoke to a scientific audience about love.


I have passages in Project Nirvana and The Transcendent Ape that describe this sort of experience. At the end of the Transcendent Ape I spoke of the need for brain scientists to feel the workings of their brain from inside when they do their experiments. How much better to use your right hemisphere to heal and repair the world.


But for most people getting to that space (short of a very fortuitous stroke or an epileptic fit, or psychedelic plant ingestion — all temporary and fraught with dangers) is the greatest riddle of the universe… However, art, nature, music, meditation, any contemplation of beauty, animals, anything that shuts down the chatter of our mind can take us a step closer to at least a human approximation of "nirvana"... About the worst thing one can do is to go to some sort of a priest or a spiritual “teacher”…


Similar excerpts from my two books:


A woman patient with a terminal breast cancer received LSD (whose effect is similar to psilocybine but stronger, with a longer-lasting "trip") to relieve her pain and anxiety. Coming out of her first session she breathed deeply and said: "You know, for the first time, I can breathe again." Later she described her impressions:

I cannot remember the logic of the experi­ence, but I became poignantly aware that the core of life is love. At this moment I felt that I was reaching out to the world — to all people — but especially to those closest to me. I wept long for the wasted years, the search for identity in false places, the neglected opportunities, the emotional energy lost in basically meaningless pursuits...

From my book "The Transcendent Ape", p. 101 also see my blog "The Transcendent Ape"
http://patrushevevolution.blogspot.com/

Memories from his childhood began to float into his consciousness, without disturbing the calm sea of his awareness or interrupting the gentle pulsation of his mantra. Snippets of dreams and nightmares were rising from the depths of his subconscious, disjointed and now somehow powerless. Images that ordinarily would have woken him shivering in a cold sweat were now dissolving painlessly, neutralized by the healing peace he felt within. Richard had a sensation as if his chest was expanding endlessly in one all embracing inhalation, which made him feel huge, as big as the universe itself. But at the same time he knew that this was an illusion and that his breathing was still, or almost still. The bright point of light with which he identified his consciousness was incomprehensibly spilling beyond the barriers of his skull, filling the whole world with a radiant and uniform glow.
He could not think at that moment, and only had a sensation of rising — or falling — precipitously. He did not know how long this ascent — or descent — lasted. When he could think again, words formed in his mind, “Life is joy, and peace, and light … And I am that, too...”

“Doctor,” he said, “I feel new, reborn. I feel… happy. You know something,” he said, feeling mildly embarrassed, “Life is joy.” (From "Project Nirvana", pp. 26 - 29)