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Sorry if too long. It’ s what I think, so what else can I say? This is a speak-your-mind form, so at the risk of putting you to sleep…

There are those who say that they have had the distinct experience of encountering consciousnesses far more encompassing than the standard-issue state of consciousness of mankind. These accounts pop up without break throughout history from all cultures and are overall far more similar than they are different. A core commonality of these accounts is that there is a coordinating awareness larger than our own. This calls to my mind European explorers’ accounts of the New World in the 1400s and 1500s. These accounts had differences in detail depending on where the explorer landed (“There is snow”; “There are palm trees”); but the gists of the accounts were 100% in agreement: “Go west for many weeks by ship, and you will see what I mean. It’s a new ballgame out there.” These historical and contemporary accounts of a larger awareness say that the only instrument capable of apprehending larger subsuming consciousnesses is consciousness, itself. However, it takes training or great talent or extraordinary circumstances for one to focus the searchlight of the attention on higher, subsuming levels, as our attentions strongly tend to focus on the more prosaic issues of physical and social survival.

No physical piece of equipment can apprehend the larger encompassing consciousness directly, save for the consciousness, no more than than lab equipment can convey the actual experience of the taste of an orange. Only through direct experience can we apprehend the taste of an orange — the same applies to larger gestalts of consciousness. This is what an unending stream of of veracious observers have said throughout history. When mainstream scientists say “show me the proof,” what they are very often saying, in effect, is, “show me a physical instrument that can somehow verify for me the taste of an orange by integrating it into my mechanistic, clockwork view of creation.” But, regardless of how many instrument readings there are (showing taste buds firing up; brain wave changes; the presence of citric acid, etc.), the actual taste of an orange will forever remain elusive, if the instrument of consciousness is not being employed in the “lab.” The sticking point for these individuals is that they do not consider as valid the only instrument capable of experiencing the taste of an orange, which is the human awareness. Without the appropriate use of the instrument of consciousness, it is not possible to transcend agnosticism.