Perhaps it is time to do a 180 here. This religious feeling [MENTION=15886]superunknown[/MENTION] speaks of, I feel tonight as I sit alone and ponder the coming singularity. Story time.........
~~~
It was a summer night in 2008. I was a curious 22 year old chemistry enthusiast, and being aware that the active ingredient in robitussin, dextromethorphan, could cause hallucinations, I went and got some and consumed the whole bottle. Then I smoked some weed, turned out the lights, and closed my eyes.
What happened next was definitely the most incredible thing that has ever happened to me. If you've never been nuked on a psychedelic before, you have no capacity to comprehend a statement like that, but it's true. The birth of my first child will not compare to this experience--not even close.
The visions of the incident are jumbled to me now. I can't remember anything I saw, because as I came up on the drug, I began to see things that must have come from an alien world or the future or something. Incomprehensible shapes, colors, and foreign objects passed through my field of vision. It began to occur to me that these visions must have been getting transmitted to me from some force beyond myself, because they were things I simply could never have thought of on my own.
A booming voice began to speak. The only thing I remember it saying was "RANDOM" over and over. In the face of this vast force, I found myself screaming in awe and terror. Uncontrollably. I found myself on my knees with my head pressed to the ground in submission, surrender; I'll do anything you want! I'll do anything you waaaaaaaaaaant!!!!!!!!
It was scary, yes, but I trusted this force, and I let go of everything--my life-- in that moment. Suddenly the intensity ceased and unspeakable vastness remained. I was no longer a person, with a name and an age and a sex. I had expanded to the size of darkness.
And I can remember no more. All I can say is that it was like being given a tour of the universe. I reckon the first part was perhaps the only part I was supposed to remember. The rest were secrets for the dead. As the drug wore off an hour or two later, I envisioned myself being washed to shore by waves of the ocean, trying to hang onto a couple of insights, like desperately trying to clutch onto 1 or 2 precious shells while being tossed around in the surf.
I could only remember 2, and I was a bit disappointed because they were, in the grand scheme of the trip, pathetic: zen is a joke, and nothing matters. Alas these insights weren't mean to apply to my life as a human being at that point. Life went back to normal and I have since been utterly bewildered and haunted by this experience.
That is... until now. The machines are coming. The machines of our dreams... coming to take us all away. Am I writing metaphorically? No, I'm actually not. I think the age of spirituality is near. What will happen when there is no longer a line between virtual and real reality? This is a COMING event, and the implications aren't difficult to ascertain if you really sit down and allow yourself to think about it with an open mind. The internet has already shown us a new, bigger, and more diverse world.
We have access to so much more now than ever. We pour our minds into the screen every time we explore it. We aren't even separate from it. My--your--mind IS the internet. The Almighty, Vast internet. Its abundance, definition, and sheer realism will only increase exponentially over time. As soon as you think of something, there it will be. You'll begin to think of more things. You already have. Where did we come up with all of these crazy memes? Could we have ever conceived of even a weekly fail compilation video on youtube just 20 years ago? Or how about the ocean of instant information that is wikipedia at our fingertips? No, the possibilities didn't exist. Now we witness.
What once took a car trip to the library's card catalog now takes a thought--a mere thought. We are far richer than we realize at this point. We just don't believe yet because we refuse to accept it. We place undue importance on the tradition of our physical presence, whose features are rapidly falling away like leaves on a tree in early October. We are entering the world of mind. Of pure, unrestrained imagination. Let go.
What can you imagine? What WILL you imagine?
Such is my life, the way I see things. If God doesn't exist yet, he will soon. And he looks like love.
~~~
That said, I am still an atheist dammit. And I always will be. There IS NO supernatural. There is no EXTERNAL god. But nonetheless, I am not my body. I am not my age. I am something much, much larger... perhaps trapped in those things. The person in the mirror, that's not me. I have experience.. aliveness. I'm vast, yet elusive. I'm hiding everywhere.
Ah, 3 AM musings. And no I'm not high right now -_-