What physical reality are you talking about? To the best we can ascertain, we only have subjective experiences of perceptions of electromagnetic phenomena. We don't get to perceive physical reality, only our own interpretation of what is postulated as an image of the physical reality.
It appears that there can be no proof either way whether a physical reality actually exists or not. All we can know is that we have a subjective experience. We can hypothesize that it arises from some other "thing", but there is no way we can know.
Also, I'm not sure anyone in this thread chain has claimed that consciousness goes beyond physical reality. I think you are the only who has assumed a physical reality (also, with no "proof").
What do you mean by this?
All you need is Boolean algebra to derive every reliable aspect of our computing technology.
01~&
Yes, you need a machine that can "execute it", but every reliable thing that a current computing machine will do is predicted by consecutive and parallel applications of the truth table:
a|b|a~&b
-|-|----
0|0| 1
0|1| 1
1|0| 1
1|1| 0
> It also wasn't Jewish enough for me. A universe in which everything was happening, regardless of whether it was kosher or not, wasn't Jewish enough.
http://books.google.com/books?id=HZq2YrPxL1IC
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/us/zalman-schachter-shalom...
Perhaps you are also a bit bothered by some aspects of your experiences that do not totally agree with materialism? Excuse me, but do you possibly feel ashamed to have thought certain things while tripping, perhaps concerned that you were delusional? Or maybe not, not everybody thinks that way.
Are you truly "impressed and amazed" by chemistry alone? Many feel that modern materialism is a cheap and disappointing answer to the question of what is really actually going on in the universe, the sum total of everything that is and will be. But of course chemistry is part of it, and it is really amazing.
I think it's worth encouraging people to be impressed with physical reality, with the amazing stuff that gets produced that way, rather than needing to discard reality as if it wasn't sufficient enough.
For an even simpler and perhaps baser phenomenon: the female form, for me. Without going into details, I find it rather amazing how something so "ordinary" can, at times, produce such powerful emotion/experience (not even referring to actual sex). Sure, perhaps it's not quite as strong as psychedelics, but I've yet to hear anyone seriously suggest that physical attraction needs explanations beyond materialism. Why should acid be qualitatively different? (I've experienced real delusions, too - all seems perfectly in line with a materialistic view of the mind.)
And these many have no better answer, in fact all they ever, ever have is some handwaving about feelings and a dietary supplement to sell you.
A powerful psychedelic trip leads to a couple of simple realisations:
- you are God that created this Universe experiencing the sensation of being separate, weak and mortal within this body
- all living beings are the same - God experiencing himself subjectively. Including the cells in your body - God in a different 'vehicle'. Hence 'we are one'. Hence the necessity to be respectful towards all of nature - they're all you and you will experience all the interactions with your 'current' self.
- you have been here since the beginning of time and will 'exist' forever.
- Life is a trip, a story, a simulation. You will wake up from it one day. It's hard to believe it, because it's so 'real'. But everybody will get 'it' when they die.
Acid trips as a way of actually discovering truth (rather than perception) seems to me to be hopelessly naive.